What is a Guild? Cross-squad communities of practice explained

A “guild” is a voluntary, cross-team community built around a shared interest, discipline, or practice rather than around the delivery of a specific product. Where a squad is a standing team with shared delivery responsibility for a product area, a guild has no delivery ownership and no direct reporting line — it exists purely to spread knowledge, align practice, and raise the bar across squads that would otherwise work in isolation.

The concept comes out of the same “Spotify model” that popularized squads, tribes, and chapters. In practice, most organizations that adopt the terminology shape guilds around whatever cross-cutting concern actually needs continuous attention — accessibility, data and AI, or, in my case, the way agile teams work day to day.

How I contribute to the Agile Guild at endress.com

Alongside leading my own squad, I am an active member of the Agile Guild for endress.com — a cross-squad group focused on the continuous improvement of how every squad on endress.com works, not just my own. Concretely, that means:

• Co-organizing and moderating offsites and All-Hands sessions that bring squads together across the wider organization.
• Running learning and growth sessions to constantly upskill squad members in agile practice.
• Leading Squad Health Checks, a structured way of assessing how a squad is actually doing — technically, collaboratively, and in team health — and using the results to drive concrete improvements.

Guild vs. Squad

A squad owns outcomes for a specific product area, day to day, with a backlog and delivery accountability — see what a squad is for how I apply that on the Products section of endress.com. A guild owns none of that; instead it owns the health of the practice itself across every squad, which is why the same person can, and often should, be part of both.

This is also part of my day-to-day skill set as a Product Owner.