Coming from a software engineering background, many developers understand the importance of scaling applications to handle increased traffic and functionality. However, fewer people are familiar with what it takes to scale a team effectively. Scaling a team from 2 to 10, or 10 to 30, in a short amount of time can introduce challenges that, if not handled properly, can lead to decreased productivity, and missed deadlines.
The goal of expanding a team is to increase speed and output. In a well-structured, scalable team, this is exactly what happens—new members bring fresh perspectives and boost development velocity. But in many cases, adding more people without proper structures in place can have the opposite effect, slowing down development.
I once joined a team of four—three engineers and one quality assurance (QA) professional—brought in to help a West African fintech company launch its product in just three months. Initially, I was confident that I could handle the task solo in about a month - at least the backend. But instead of speeding things up, our presence as an external team actually slowed things down. Aside scalability, another aspect of a team that many don’t pay enough attention to is resilience.
The Resilience of a Scalable Team
One of the key aspects of scalability in a team is its resilience—the ability of the team to continue functioning smoothly even when certain individuals leave or become unavailable. If the departure of a few key team members can halt the entire project, it's a sign that the team isn't scalable. I've seen this play out many times when clients have to restart a project from scratch just because they replaced a developer.
A truly scalable team should be able to withstand turnover and changes in personnel without losing momentum. This is where proper documentation becomes crucial.
Why Did We Fail to Speed Up the Team?
Reflecting on my experience with the fintech startup, several factors contributed to the slowdown:
Lack of Clear Documentation: On my first day, I spent almost a full day trying to set up the Laravel project because migrations were failing. It turned out that many business logic decisions had been placed inside the migration files, which also included seeding logic. No one told me this and this is deviation from Laravel convention. Instead, I was handed a dump MySQL file. It was much later that I realized the dump file wasn’t just to populate tables, but to create them.
Unclear Coding Standards: When I finally managed to get my code ready for review, it took over 48 hours of back-and-forth to get it approved. At one point, I realized the team had a set of unwritten rules—do’s and don'ts—that they never shared with me. When I asked for their coding style guide, they gave me an outdated style guide, which only partially helped.
Duplicate Codebases: Another hurdle was discovering that the application had two separate Laravel installations—one for the admin panel and another for public-facing features. Often, we had to build similar features on both sides. But if we wrote code for one side without realizing a similar feature already existed on the other, our code would be rejected for "unnecessary duplication." In some cases, entire days of work were thrown out because the same functionality already existed elsewhere, or because we hadn’t used an internal library that did the same thing. So why were we not informed?
These issues wasted valuable time. Not only did we (the external team) spend days figuring out these quirks, but the in-house team also wasted time walking us through them during pull request (PR) reviews and calls. This time could have been spent writing new code and shipping features. In the end both in-house dev team, external team, business wonders of both sides were frustrated.
How Can Teams Avoid These Problems and Scale Faster?
A month or so later, I joined a small fintech startup to help build its first in-house infrastructure with a small team. From day one, I used careful reflection from past experience to set the environment ready for team scaling. I realized the key to avoiding these roadblocks and scaling a team effectively lies in creating a solid foundation of documentation. Here’s how you can ensure that adding new team members increases, rather than decreases, your team’s productivity:
Detailed Documentation: Every engineering team should treat documentation as a core part of its culture, not an afterthought. Good documentation doesn’t just cover API endpoints but also includes:
Internal reusable libraries.
Engineering decisions and the rationale behind them.
A map of the codebase, with explanations for key sections.
Global helpers and libraries, with examples or demos of their usage.
System and infrastructure architecture
.
This type of documentation allows new team members to understand the codebase quickly, reducing the need for constant one-on-one help from existing developers. This, in turn, frees up more time for your in-house team to focus on writing code and building new features instead of answering repetitive questions.
Coding Style Guides:
A clear, up-to-date coding style guide is essential for ensuring consistency across the team. It helps ensure that everyone writes code in a similar way, reducing friction during code reviews. But a style guide is only the start—teams also need to document specific practices unique to their project, like why certain architectural decisions were made and when to use custom-built libraries.
Standardized Onboarding:
As your team grows, onboarding becomes one of the most critical factors in determining whether new hires will integrate smoothly or become a drain on productivity. A standardized onboarding process, built on solid documentation, can help new team members get up to speed quickly. This includes documentation on the tools your team uses, the workflow you follow, and the architecture of the codebase.
You can take onboarding a step further by pairing new hires with experienced team members for one-on-one guidance. This approach ensures that newcomers feel supported while reducing the amount of time senior engineers spend on repetitive onboarding tasks.
Knowledge Sharing: Teams should cultivate a culture of knowledge sharing. This can be done through:
Internal wikis where developers document their findings and solutions.
Regular "show-and-tell" sessions where team members demonstrate new tools or code patterns.
Mentorship programs where experienced developers coach junior engineers.
When knowledge is shared openly and widely, the team becomes more resilient. Replacing a developer doesn’t mean losing critical knowledge because it’s already documented and shared with the rest of the team.
Conclusion
Documentation is the key to scaling teams effectively. Without it, you risk creating bottlenecks, increasing frustration, and slowing down development—exactly the opposite of what you want when bringing new people onboard. With detailed documentation, a strong onboarding process, and a culture of knowledge sharing, teams can scale quickly and efficiently, ensuring that new hires contribute positively from day one instead of dragging the team down.
So, if you want your team to scale successfully, don’t just focus on adding headcount—focus on building the right infrastructure through documentation. You'll be amazed at how much smoother everything runs!
I am Ikechukwu Vincent a Full Stack Software Engineer proficient in PHP, Python, NodeJs, and React. I specialize in building B2B Multi-tenancy applications.
Connect with me on Socials
Top comments (0)