Why We Continue to Develop Our Company’s Structure
Each company has its own organisational structure, whether traditional, functional, flat, divisional or matrix.
When founding Vega IT, our colleagues and founders Saša and Vladan were determined to flatten the traditional hierarchy at our organisation. They felt that it would be challenging to create a modern company with an outdated structure.
Saša Popović and Vladan Ostojić
Over the years, we adopted the flat structure (also known as a horizontal organisation or delayering) with few or no middle management levels.
As the company was evolving, we felt the need to go one step further to answer our organisation's growing needs and decided to introduce so-called matrix structure.
What is Matrix Organisational Structure and Why We Have Chosen It?
If you analyse the matrix chart, you can notice that this type of structure looks like a grid - unlike the traditional (top-down) structure.
We believe that this change has multiple benefits in our company, allowing us to create a more dynamic environment where our colleagues can utilise their knowledge across different dimensions in the grid.
Implementing a new system for our organisation required creating new roles in our company. That's why a few of our colleagues were promoted to the Development Lead role.
Mihajlo Radmilović, Ana Bjelica, Darko Opala, Nenad Rad and Nenad Perčić.
The new role is moderately similar to the role of a functional manager, a dedicated person who follows and encourages our professional development.
To find out more about the company's different roles, we spoke to our CEO Saša Popović.
Saša, how do you see the difference between Development Lead, Team Lead and Project Manager at Vega IT?
Saša: Unlike “Team lead” and “Project Manager” roles, who will take care of our work while we are working on a specific project as a team, colleagues whose role is “Development lead” will take care of us from the moment we start working in this company until the moment we leave the company, regardless of what project we are working on, whether we are moving from one project to another and what technologies we use.
In other words, when we are moving from one project to another, it’s highly likely that we will get a new Team lead, but, we will still have the same Development lead.
Matrix organisational chart at Vega IT.
“Development lead” role is an additional benefit for our colleagues because these people’s responsibility is to keep track of our colleagues’ development and work, and know what skills and how much experience they have so that they would know if any of our colleagues need assistance to overcome certain challenges. Also the task of the development lead is to find out whether our colleagues’ capabilities are exploited to their maximum and if there is anything the company can do to turn their weaknesses into their strengths.
The role of the “Development lead” does not introduce any kind of hierarchy into our organisational structure. Essentially, its purpose is to offer assistance.
For instance, each of us can decide whether to turn to the development lead, someone from our People Experience and Support team, Boban, Vladan, me or somebody else in case they are having difficulty dealing with a particular issue.
Takeaway
While there are pros and cons to every management structure, we believe that matrix structure provides us with an even better environment to learn and grow.
So far, we were successful at developing our company and were recognised as one of the fastest-growing domestic IT companies.
We are looking forward to further improving both our company and its culture, which will help us achieve our goals.
