sprout February 11, 2026 3 min read

SquadView

A custom tool for visualizing the relationships between groups and entities in your organization.

#Tools #Agile

An organizational map in SquadView

I built a new tool to try to better map how work happens in organizations. It’s working title is SquadView.

In the past, I used digital whiteboards to sketch these pictures out. While that worked okay, I wanted to build a more fit-for-purpose solution, something specifically designed for mapping how teams and work are connected.

Introduction

Whenever I start work on a new program or team, the only way I feel like I can really understand how things work is by creating a map.

In order to get a clear sense of what’s going on, I start by mapping out:

  • Organization and Team Structure: Which teams are involved, and which departments do they belong to?
  • Boundaries of Responsibility: What systems, services or activities is each team responsible for?
  • Management: Who manages each of these groups?
  • Collaboration: How do these different people and teams work together?
  • Work: Where is the work coming from?

The Work Graph

Despite how useful I’ve found this activity, I’ve never found anyone doing anything like it. I typically build one of these on my own after joining a project, then start showing it to others when I see they also need help figuring out the bigger system around them.

The most I ever see are static tables listing team members, titles, and resources—which tells you who people are, but not how people work together.

Typical models focus on parts of the picture:

  • Org structures show how people are organized into hierarchical groups
  • Workflow maps (Kanban systems/Value Stream Maps) show how work flows through teams and activities.

But some elements were always missing from the picture:

  • Sources of Demand: Where is the work coming from? What are the sources of work for teams, for managers, and even for executives?
  • Meetings: What meetings and do these groups rely on to keep moving? How does information flow horizontally across groups that need to collaborate?
  • Layers: How does information flow vertically across different levels of the hierarchy?

Highlights

  • Team-level Agile is not enough: How the connected network of things like services, capabilities, teams, rituals and management work together (or don’t) determines performance.
  • A functional stakeholder map: It creates a functional view rather than just a political one.
  • Navigate new structures: When organizations can’t support stable teams, they instead have to spin up new teams and new structures for every new initiative. These sorts of maps can help teams navigate these new systems.
  • Visualize waste: It brings hidden wastes to light—overloaded teams, too many meetings, and bottlenecks.
  • Expose dependencies: It reveals the handoffs responsible for slowing work down.

A sleek interface for managing different groups in your organization

Add various meetings, teams, roles, work types to your organization’s different groups

Zoom in on just one team or department in your organization

Check out SquadView

(Also, I’m open to suggestions for what to call this kind of graph.)