How to Scale a Software Engineering Team (Without the Growing Pains)

It’s one of the hardest facts of life. Growth is important, desirable, perhaps even essential – but the process can be painful. 

Scaling a software engineering team often incurs growing pains that make you question whether it’s worth it.

But for IT firms that manage this process successfully, the rewards are significant: greater capacity, faster delivery, happier clients, and a stronger team. 

So how exactly should you scale an engineering team – without the headaches? The foundation is effective resource management. Let's get into it.

Scaling a software engineering team: what are the key challenges?

Creating an efficient structure, managing increased complexity, knowing who and when to hire, and maintaining team culture are just some of the challenges when growing or scaling a software development team.

Many IT firm scaling problems are related to ineffective resource management in software engineering.

This isn’t a criticism – we listen and we don’t judge – but it is a challenge to address. 

Most of you will be familiar with SAFe – the Scaled Agile Framework – regardless of whether you use Agile methodology.

‍In this framework, team and technical ability are highly relevant when you’re trying to scale, emphasizing that high-performing teams are the core building blocks of enterprise agility.

But without a solid understanding of team capacity, skills, and availability, it’s impossible to build those high-performing teams.

Let’s dig into why, before discussing the solutions.

How does resource management impact scalability in software engineering?

Internal issues in software development firms – such as untrustworthy data, lack of visibility into supply and demand, and inaccurate project forecasting – all make the team scaling process more painful than it needs to be.

Here are five pain points that could be holding back your ambitions. 

❌ Not knowing how well you use current resources

If you don’t know how your current team is being used, some people may be twiddling their thumbs waiting for work, while others are at risk of that perennial problem, software engineer burnout. This makes scaling risky: you might hire when you don’t need to or fail to hire when you do.

This is a question of resource utilization. 

❌ Not knowing if you have people for forthcoming projects

Without a clear view of availability and demand, you risk either turning down projects you could handle or overloading your team and disappointing clients. Neither is good for growth.

This is a resource capacity planning problem. 

❌ Not knowing who or when to hire

Hire too early, and you waste budget; hire too late, and projects stall. Getting timing and skill mix wrong slows growth – and frustrates your team and customers.

This is also about strategic capacity planning. 

❌ Not knowing what skills are available

If you don’t know people’s skills, they may be assigned to projects they aren’t equipped for or engaged by – which undermines intrinsic motivation and productivity. Plus, you miss opportunities to upskill them to meet future demand internally.

This is a question of skills management.

❌ Not knowing what resources new projects require

Without clear estimates, you can’t be sure you have the people or skills you need. Which takes us back to the risks discussed above – over- or under-staffing, hiring the wrong people at the wrong times. It makes it near impossible to scale or grow with confidence.

This is about resource forecasting.  

Of course, not all of the challenges are internal. Clients can change requirements or cancel work, which makes resource planning less predictable and scaling more complex. But when you can’t control that, it makes sense to control what you can. 

How to scale a software team using resource management best practices

One of the best ways to scale a software engineering team is to increase your resource management maturity. That means improving the systems, processes, and data you use to manage and allocate your resources. 

1. Have a clear roadmap to align efforts

You need to be clear on why you want to scale or grow your software development team. Without this, you’ll struggle to make progress or secure the buy-in that your initiative needs.

Develop a roadmap that links to your business strategy by asking the right questions, such as:

• What business objectives this initiative needs to address – such as increasing gaps or accelerating delivery?
• What does the future look like when we’ve successfully scaled the team – like lower bench time or higher throughput? 
• What resources are available to achieve it – such as budget, tools, and data?
• What’s the timeframe for achieving this change? 

2. Structure your team to scale efficiently 

How you organize your team can have a big impact on your ability to scale – and your costs. Poor team structures cost companies 23% more in project expenses, and they’re less likely to be top performers in the market.

When it comes to software development team structure, consider:

• Organization size – Smaller startups can prioritize agility as they require less oversight, but as you grow, you’ll need more management to keep complex structures under control.
• Team size – When you get to around 10 team members, you’ll need to add a manager.
• Project complexity – More complex projects need more collaboration and coordination.
• Team model – Competency-based models centralize expertise but may create silos; matrix models improve collaboration but require coordination.
• Location and distribution – Remote engineering teams may need additional alignment mechanisms.

3. Optimize resource utilization to boost internal capacity

Efficient use of your existing team is one of the fastest ways to scale without adding headcount.

Resource utilization is about ensuring each team member’s time is allocated effectively across projects and tasks, maximizing productive hours while avoiding over- or under-allocation.

• Monitor resource utilization to ensure workloads are productive and balanced. Aim for 85% overall utilization to protect well-being, and have a buffer for unexpected priority shifts.
• Track different types of utilization – both billable and non-billable – to ensure resources are appropriately focusing on revenue-driving work.
• Create regular bench reports to move resources off the bench and into billable activities. 
• Use live data to quickly reallocate people when projects shift, deadlines change, or urgent tasks arise.
  

By optimizing utilization, you can increase throughput and take on more projects without immediately hiring, scaling your team’s capacity in the most cost-effective way.

4. Improve skills management to unlock efficiency and motivation 

While utilization focuses on time, skills management ensures that the right people are assigned to the right work.

This improves scheduling, delivery, and quality. But it also unlocks intrinsic motivation, which SAFe highlights as key for high-performing software teams. 

• Maintain a centralized skills inventory – linked to your project plans – so you can assign the right people to the right projects at the right time.
• Track career goals and development aspirations, so you can assign projects that engage people. 
• Perform regular skills gap analysis, to identify hiring needs, training opportunities, etc.
• Use career pathing  and upskilling as an alternative to external hiring.

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5. Improve capacity planning for less cost and disruption 

Capacity planning is about matching supply to demand – both on current projects and your future pipeline. This requires an understanding of what projects need, and whether you have the people and skills you need.

It also helps you spot spare time and talent that you could sell to customers, rather than letting it go to waste. 

• Ensure sales and project management teams collect thorough project scopes and turn these into Work Breakdown Structures to inform resource plans.
• Cross-reference resource needs against availability, utilization, and capacity data to pinpoint gaps that need filling – so you can hire and upskill with precision – and avoid costly overhiring. 
• Fill gaps proactively BEFORE they impact project delivery or require unnecessary last-minute hiring.
  

6. Boost forecasting accuracy for higher predictability  

Strong forecasting practices ensure your project schedules, budgets, and resource plans are as accurate as they can be.

This helps protect project quality, client satisfaction, and staff wellbeing. It also protects your profit margins, particularly for fixed-price projects. And it flags any resource constraints or wasted capacity in advance. 

• Use historical data to inform analogous estimating – such as how long and what resources previous similar projects required.
• Use predicted-vs-actual data to monitor variance from your forecast schedule and budget, to improve them in future.
  

7. Improve cross-team coordination to reduce risk and duplication  

Another SAFe theme is cross-team coordination. Decentralized resource management makes it harder to realize the benefits of resource planning, because teams don’t have access to information and insights about resource availability, skills, and more. 

Centralized resource management enables smoother coordination, faster decision-making, and a more predictable scaling process.

• Use a unified platform to track availability, skills, and project assignments across the organization.
• Standardize workflows and communication to reduce duplicated effort.
• Ensure all teams have visibility into resource allocation and priorities.
  

8. Measure and adjust for continual improvement 

Scaling is an ongoing process, not a one-time project. To refine processes, optimize allocations, and continuously improve both team performance and organizational scalability, track resource management KPIs such as: 

• Team utilization and throughput
• Project delivery timelines
• Employee engagement and turnover
• Forecasting accuracy
  

9. Use the right tools to make all of this oh-so easier

You knew it was coming. The pitch for resource management software.

But it’s true: a resource management platform like Runn makes this entire process faster, easier, and more accurate. 

Legacy tools, like spreadsheets, waste hours in analysis and risk human error. Disconnected tools reduce visibility and decision-making confidence. All this means you’re trying to scale with dubious, outdated information. 

A dedicated, centralized resource management system:

• Provides live data on utilization, capacity, availability, and skills.
• Presents that data visually in heatmaps and charts for instant actionable insights. 
• Syncs data to project schedules, for capacity insights now and next year.
• Shows you if your team is earning or burning money with billable hours.
• Tells you who and when to hire.

And lots more.

Scale your software team with confidence with Runn

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