If you need more structure or scale than a black ops dev team can provide, a regular team of soldiers may suit your needs.
Soldier development teams work together as cohesive units and can typically accomplish much more than a black ops team—though with the added cost of management overhead and infrastructure.
Unlike black ops teams, soldiers have responsibilities that extend beyond just completing the mission. There’s an expectation of ongoing support, and long-term maintenance.
This means you can’t have a truly small soldier development team. Even a “small” dev team will likely include multiple development sub-teams, managers to oversee them, and a dedicated product manager.
However, once this is in place, you gain the ability to scale up your business. Different units can tackle multiple projects simultaneously. As your product grows beyond its minimal feature set, this level of expansion will be necessary to support product development, address customer issues, and meet increasing business demands.
If you need more scale and structure than a black ops team can provide, a team of development soldiers might just do the trick.
But if you’re looking for even greater firepower, that’s when you bring in The Engineers… more on that tomorrow.