How to Safely Split an Agile Team While Maintaining Accountability and Capability

As Agile teams evolve, organisations often find themselves needing to scale or re-align teams based on growing demand, workload, or changing product priorities. One common challenge is how to split a single high-performing Agile team into two, without disrupting momentum, losing critical knowledge, or compromising delivery quality.

Your goal shouldn’t just be to divide people—it should be to re-form two cohesive, accountable, and balanced Agile teams. Here’s how to approach that strategically and safely.

Step 1: Define Clear Accountabilities for Both Teams

Before any splitting occurs, clearly identify what accountabilities the original team holds. These may include:

• Feature development

• Support for existing applications

• Defect management

• Maintenance of shared components or platforms

Ensure that all these responsibilities are either assigned to one of the new teams or shared in a structured way. For example, if your original team supports a legacy application, ensure that either Team A or Team B owns that responsibility explicitly—or define a shared support rotation model with service levels clearly understood by both teams.

Tip: Don’t assume support will “just get handled.” Unclear support responsibilities are a fast track to burnout and dropped issues.

Step 2: Balance Skillsets Across the Teams

Review the composition of the original team and assess critical skills:

• Front-end, back-end, and full-stack development

• QA and automation testing

• DevOps or infrastructure

• Business analysis or domain knowledge

From your team structure slide, you had engineers, testers, and hybrid roles. When splitting, ensure each team has enough of each role to remain self-sufficient. If one team lacks a key capability (e.g., test automation), it’s better to augment the team with a new hire or contractor than to leave a critical gap.

Example from your structure:
An "Engineer & Tester" role is introduced as an additional member in the split—this is a great practice to address hybrid needs and maintain coverage.

Step 3: Determine Shared Roles Thoughtfully

Some roles, like Product Owner (PO), Scrum Master (SM), and Technical Lead (TL), may not require full duplication immediately. It’s reasonable—and sometimes beneficial—to share these roles temporarily while new dynamics settle in. But shared roles must be managed carefully to avoid:

• Context switching overload

• Conflicting priorities

• Delayed decision-making

Guideline:
If one PO is shared across both teams, they should have a clear backlog priority model and enough time to engage with both groups. Similarly, a shared Technical Lead should set coding standards and architecture direction but empower individual engineers to make tactical decisions.

Step 4: Co-design the Split with the Team

Agile is about collaboration—so let the team participate in the design of the split. Co-create the new team structures together, discuss support responsibilities, and allow people to express where they feel they add the most value. This increases buy-in and helps surface knowledge about dependencies and risks that leaders might miss.

Consider using a workshop format:

• Map out current accountabilities

• List skills and responsibilities needed per team

• Draft new team formations and review together

Step 5: Communicate, Monitor, and Iterate

Finally, don’t assume the split will go perfectly on day one. Communicate clearly with stakeholders, set expectations, and run the first few sprints with extra care.

Monitor key metrics like:

• Throughput stability

• Defect rates

• Cross-team dependencies

• Morale and team health

Retrospectives should specifically address how the split is working, and you should be open to re-balancing teams or adjusting responsibilities.

Summary

Splitting an Agile team isn’t just a logistical exercise—it’s an organisational design challenge. Done well, it can lead to better focus, faster delivery, and more empowered teams. Done poorly, it risks losing momentum, duplicating effort, or dropping the ball on critical support work.

Follow these principles to get it right:

• Make accountabilities explicit

• Balance team skillsets (and augment where needed)

• Thoughtfully share critical roles

• Design with the team—not to the team

• Monitor, adapt, and iterate

By treating the split as a collaborative evolution rather than a restructure, you’ll set your Agile teams up for long-term success.