How to Scale a Team from 6 to 25: Building Down to Move Up

Traditional career growth often feels like climbing a ladder — always reaching for the next rung up. But what I learned while scaling an Autodesk team taught me something different: sometimes, the best way to grow is to build downward, creating opportunities for others to rise.

Here’s how I transformed a 6-person development team into a thriving organization of 25 professionals across three specialized units, and the unexpected lessons about leadership it taught me.

What started as a team of four developers, one project manager, and myself as Tech Lead grew organically to 10–12 people during the first year, as we established our processes and culture. However, the real challenge emerged when we needed to scale rapidly: new projects demanded we nearly double our size, pushing me to rethink our entire structure and approach to leadership.

The Pivot: Breaking Down to Scale Up

With this rapid growth ahead of us, I proposed splitting the team into three specialized units, each with its own leader.

The restructuring plan was based on technological specialization:

React Base Project Team:

• Focused on core React architecture
• Handled foundational components and features
• Maintained core project stability

Web Components Project Team:

• Specialized in web component development
• Created reusable, framework-agnostic components
• Ensured cross-platform compatibility

Design Team:

• Contribute to the design system team:
• Ensured UI/UX consistency
• Bridged the gap between design and implementation

This technical division wasn’t arbitrary — it aligned with Autodesk’s architectural vision and allowed each team to develop deep expertise in their domain while maintaining clear interfaces between teams.

The Key Innovation: Rather than maintaining direct control, I would:

• Promote two developers to Tech Lead positions, each specializing in their respective technical domains
• Elevate a UX designer to lead the design team
• Position myself as a leader of leaders, ensuring architectural consistency across all three areas

Implementation: The Leadership Matrix

The new structure worked like this:

Benefits of this approach:

1. Created clear growth paths for team members
2. Reduced communication overhead
3. Enabled specialized focus for each team
4. Allowed for faster decision-making
5. Provided leadership development opportunities

Reality Check: When Growth Comes Knocking

While I’ve presented this scaling journey in a structured way, I should be honest: much of this happened faster than ideal. The reality of being a contractor means sometimes having to move at the speed of business rather than the speed of perfect planning.

Our big scaling moment came unexpectedly during a visit to Autodesk’s Portland offices. The news of a major project would require adding eight team members, while our existing projects needed five more developers and UX designers. This meant we would nearly double our size, going from 12 to 25 people. I had to present my team-splitting strategy the very next day. Fortunately, both the Autodesk manager and director loved the idea, and my Globant leadership supported it as well.

Did it work? Yes. Could it have been smoother with more preparation time? Absolutely. While we succeeded, I would have loved more time to train the new leaders before throwing them into their roles.

Learning Through Challenges

New Leaders’ Journey

Not everything was smooth sailing. One of our biggest challenges came from an unexpected place: my assumption that new leaders would naturally adopt my leadership style. I learned that leadership transition requires explicit knowledge transfer — not just about processes, but about leadership philosophy and approach.

Key Learnings from This:

1. Leadership styles need to be actively taught, not just demonstrated
2. Internal leadership processes need clear documentation
3. New leaders need space to develop their own style while maintaining team consistency

Words of Wisdom for Future Leaders

After this journey, here’s what I wish someone had told me at the start:

The Urgency Trap: Don’t let the daily urgent tasks prevent you from working on important, non-urgent matters. It’s tempting to focus solely on putting out fires, but that’s a recipe for perpetual reactiveness. Block time for:

1. Strategic planning
2. Team development
3. Process improvement
4. Identifying growth opportunities

Remember: If you’re too busy fighting fires, you’ll miss the chances to fireproof your house.

Investment in People: The time you spend developing your team members isn’t a cost — it’s an investment that pays dividends in:

1. Team loyalty
2. Improved performance
3. Reduced stress
4. More opportunities for everyone

Looking Forward

Now, as I begin my new role at Hilton account, I’m taking a different approach. Armed with these experiences, I’m investing time in the “Important but Not Urgent” quadrant from day one:

1. Identifying potential leaders early
2. Building scalable processes before we need them
3. Creating training programs proactively
4. Establishing clear growth paths ahead of time

The experience taught me that scaling a team isn’t just about managing more people — it’s about creating systems that allow others to grow. By building down, you create a foundation that allows everyone, including yourself, to rise higher.

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What’s your experience with scaling teams? Have you found traditional hierarchical growth limiting? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Unsplash

[About the Author: A Subject Matter Expert with 12+ years in IT, currently leading technical initiatives at Hilton and mentoring tech leads. Previously led teams at Autodesk and other major enterprises.]