Teams are a foundational element of the Squared platform, providing structure and organization for your work. This overview explains what teams are, how they function within Squared, and how they can help your organization collaborate more effectively.

What is a Team in Squared?

A team in Squared represents a group of people working together on related tasks or projects. Teams serve as the primary organizational unit within your workspace, allowing you to:

• Group related work and team members together
• Establish clear ownership of tasks and projects
• Customize workflows to match specific team processes
• Track progress and performance at the team level
• Create a focused environment for collaboration

Each team has its own distinct identity within your workspace, including a unique name and identifier that appears in task IDs (for example, "ENG-123" for an Engineering team task).

Key Team Features

Team Structure

Teams provide structure through several key components:

• Members: The people who belong to the team, with defined roles
• Tasks: The work items owned by the team
• Sprints: Time-boxed periods for focused work (if enabled)
• Views: Customized ways of visualizing the team's work
• Settings: Configuration options specific to the team

This structure creates clarity around who is responsible for what work and how that work progresses.

Team Workflows

Each team can define its own workflow, including:

• Custom task statuses that reflect how the team works
• Defined transitions between statuses
• Effort tracking methods that match the team's estimation approach
• Automation rules for routine task updates
• Templates for common task types

These customizable workflows ensure that Squared can adapt to how your team prefers to work, rather than forcing you to adapt to the tool.

Team Performance Tracking

Teams serve as a unit for measuring and improving performance:

• Track velocity and completion rates
• Measure cycle time and lead time
• Identify bottlenecks in the workflow
• Monitor workload distribution
• Compare performance across sprints

These metrics help teams continuously improve their processes and delivery.

Teams in Your Organization

Teams in Squared typically align with your organizational structure, but with flexibility to support your specific needs. Common team structures include:

Functional Teams

Teams organized around specific functions or disciplines:

• Engineering Team
• Marketing Team
• Design Team
• Customer Support Team

These teams often have specialized workflows and expertise in particular areas.

Project Teams

Teams focused on delivering specific projects or initiatives:

• Website Redesign Team
• Product Launch Team
• Client X Implementation Team

Project teams may be temporary in nature, existing only for the duration of the project.

Cross-Functional Teams

Teams that bring together members from different disciplines:

• Product Team (including product managers, designers, engineers)
• Growth Team (including marketers, analysts, developers)
• Customer Experience Team (including support, success, product specialists)

These teams often work on end-to-end delivery of products or services.

Working with Teams

Joining Teams

You may belong to one or more teams within your workspace:

• You'll be added to teams by workspace administrators or team leads
• Your role may differ between teams (lead in one, member in another)
• You can easily switch between team contexts in the interface
• Your notifications can be configured per team

This flexibility allows you to collaborate across different areas while maintaining focus.

Team Communication

Teams facilitate communication in several ways:

• Task comments for discussing specific work items
• Team announcements for important updates
• @mentions to draw attention to specific individuals
• Activity feeds showing recent team actions
• Team meetings and retrospectives

These communication channels keep everyone aligned and informed.

Team Collaboration

Teams enable effective collaboration through:

• Shared views of work in progress
• Clear task ownership and accountability
• Visibility into dependencies and blockers
• Collective progress tracking
• Shared documentation and resources

This collaborative environment helps teams deliver work more efficiently.

Getting Started with Teams

If you're new to Squared or just joining a team, here are some steps to get started:

1. Explore Your Team: Navigate to your team in the sidebar and explore the current tasks and structure.
2. Understand the Workflow: Familiarize yourself with your team's statuses and how work progresses.
3. Review Team Settings: Check the team settings to understand how the team has customized Squared.
4. Connect with Team Members: Identify who's on your team and their roles.
5. Create Your First Task: Create a task within your team to practice using the system.

Managing Teams

For team leads and administrators, effective team management involves:

• Configuring team settings to match your processes
• Monitoring team workload and performance
• Adjusting processes and workflows as needed
• Onboarding new team members effectively
• Facilitating communication and collaboration

These management activities help keep your team operating smoothly and efficiently.

Teams and Sprints

Many teams in Squared use sprints to organize their work into focused time periods:

• Sprints provide a cadence for planning and delivery
• Sprint planning helps prioritize and allocate work
• Sprint reviews celebrate accomplishments
• Sprint retrospectives drive continuous improvement
• Sprint metrics track progress over time

Sprints are optional but highly beneficial for many teams, especially those using agile methodologies.

Teams and Workspaces

Teams exist within the context of a workspace:

• A workspace can contain multiple teams
• Team members must also be workspace members
• Teams inherit certain settings from the workspace level
• Cross-team collaboration happens within the workspace

This hierarchical structure allows for both team autonomy and organizational alignment.

Next Steps

Ready to dive deeper into teams in Squared? Explore these detailed guides:

• Working With Multiple Teams: Learn how to navigate and collaborate across different teams.
• Creating Teams: Step-by-step instructions for setting up new teams.
• Managing Teams: Daily operations of team management.
• Team Settings: Detailed configuration options for customizing team workflows.

These guides will help you make the most of teams in Squared, whether you're a team member, lead, or administrator.