Organizational Design at Scale: Lessons from Coolblue’s Experimental Approach

Scaling an organization while maintaining startup agility and customer focus is one of the most challenging aspects of technology leadership. Most companies struggle with Conway’s Law—their systems inevitably mirror their organizational structure—often resulting in rigid hierarchies that slow innovation and reduce customer responsiveness. However, some organizations have found ways to scale while preserving the experimental mindset and customer obsession that made them successful.

Coolblue’s organizational transformation, documented by the Unfix organization design framework, provides a compelling example of how to scale thoughtfully while maintaining organizational agility. Drawing from their journey and connecting it to our operating model framework, this post explores practical approaches to organizational design that enable sustainable growth without sacrificing innovation.

The Coolblue Model: Experimentation at Scale

Core Organizational Principles

Coolblue has built their entire organizational philosophy around customer obsession and continuous experimentation. As detailed in the Unfix case study, their approach is guided by fundamental principles that align perfectly with our culture framework:

“Everything starts with an experiment”: Rather than implementing large-scale changes based on theory, Coolblue tests everything in small, controlled experiments.

Customer experience obsession: With a Net Promoter Score of 67 (exceptional for retail), Coolblue’s organizational design prioritizes customer value above internal convenience.

Self-organization within structure: Teams have significant autonomy within clear boundaries and accountability frameworks.

Continuous learning and adaptation: The organization continuously evolves based on what they learn from experiments and customer feedback.

The Domain-Based Structure

Coolblue organizes their technology organization into 30 “Domains” (similar to what Unfix calls “Bases”), each with 2-7 team members. This structure provides several advantages:

Clear Ownership: Each Domain owns a specific part of the customer experience or business capability.

Manageable Complexity: Small team sizes enable rapid communication and decision-making.

End-to-End Responsibility: Domains handle complete value streams rather than handing off between specialized teams.

Scalable Independence: New Domains can be created as the business grows without disrupting existing teams.

Scaling Challenges and Solutions

The Matrix Management Approach

Coolblue uses a matrix management structure with both Development Managers (people management) and Domain Bosses (business ownership). This dual-authority model addresses common scaling challenges:

People Development: Development Managers focus on career growth, skill development, and team member well-being.

Business Alignment: Domain Bosses ensure teams stay focused on customer value and business outcomes.

Knowledge Sharing: The matrix structure enables knowledge transfer across Domains while maintaining team autonomy.

Scalability: The structure can grow organically as new Domains are created and new management layers are added only when necessary.

Experimental Evolution

What makes Coolblue’s approach particularly powerful is their willingness to experiment with organizational structure itself. The Unfix analysis suggests several potential evolution paths:

Domain Expansion: Growing successful Domains from 7 to 15+ members when the scope justifies larger teams.

Guild Creation: Establishing cross-Domain guilds for technical disciplines like security, data, and architecture.

Cluster Formation: Creating Clusters and Assemblies for coordinating work across related Domains.

Specialized Services: Developing dedicated service Domains that support multiple business Domains.

Connecting to Our Operating Model Framework

Foundation Alignment

Coolblue’s success demonstrates the importance of strong foundational elements outlined in our operating model foundation:

Culture Framework: Their experimental mindset and customer obsession create psychological safety for innovation while maintaining focus on business outcomes.

Values and Principles: Clear principles like “everything starts with an experiment” guide decision-making at all levels.

Communication Patterns: Small Domain sizes and matrix management enable efficient communication while preventing information silos.

Operations Excellence

The Coolblue model exemplifies several principles from our operations framework:

Decision-Making Authority: Domains have clear authority within their scope, enabling rapid response to customer needs.

Coordination Mechanisms: The matrix structure provides coordination without creating bureaucratic overhead.

Performance Management: Teams are evaluated based on customer outcomes rather than internal metrics.

Optimization Practices

Coolblue’s approach aligns with our optimization strategies:

Flow Optimization: Domain-based organization minimizes handoffs and reduces cycle time from idea to customer value.

Cost Optimization: Small, autonomous teams reduce coordination overhead and management costs.

Motivation Optimization: Clear ownership and customer impact create intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction.

Implementing Domain-Based Organization

Assessment: Is Your Organization Ready?

Before implementing a domain-based structure, assess your organizational readiness:

Cultural Prerequisites:

• Psychological safety for experimentation and failure
• Customer-first mindset throughout the organization
• Trust in team-level decision-making
• Comfort with ambiguity and continuous change

Technical Prerequisites:

• Microservices or modular architecture that supports team independence
• Comprehensive monitoring and observability
• Automated testing and deployment capabilities
• Clear API contracts and service boundaries

Leadership Prerequisites:

• Servant leadership mindset focused on team enablement
• Comfort with distributed decision-making
• Skills in coaching and facilitation rather than command-and-control
• Ability to set clear boundaries and expectations

Domain Design Principles

Customer Journey Alignment: Organize Domains around customer value streams rather than technical components.

Team Cognitive Load: Ensure each Domain’s scope fits within the cognitive capacity of 2-7 people.

Minimal Dependencies: Design Domain boundaries to minimize coordination requirements with other teams.

Clear Ownership: Each Domain should have unambiguous ownership of specific business outcomes.

Example Domain Structure

E-commerce Organization Domains:

Customer Experience Domains:
  - Search and Discovery (2-7 people)
  - Product Catalog (3-6 people)
  - Shopping Cart and Checkout (4-7 people)
  - Order Management (3-5 people)
  - Customer Support (2-4 people)

Platform Domains:
  - Identity and Authentication (2-4 people)
  - Payment Processing (3-6 people)
  - Inventory Management (4-7 people)
  - Recommendation Engine (3-5 people)

Infrastructure Domains:
  - Core Platform Services (4-7 people)
  - Data and Analytics (3-6 people)
  - Security and Compliance (2-5 people)

The Role of Experimentation

Organizational Experiments

Following Coolblue’s example, treat organizational design as a series of experiments:

Team Structure Experiments:

• Test different team sizes and compositions
• Experiment with different Domain boundary definitions
• Try various decision-making and escalation processes
• Test different coordination mechanisms

Management Structure Experiments:

• Experiment with flat vs. hierarchical structures
• Test different manager-to-report ratios
• Try various performance evaluation approaches
• Experiment with different career progression paths

Communication Pattern Experiments:

• Test different meeting rhythms and formats
• Experiment with various documentation and knowledge sharing approaches
• Try different tools and platforms for team coordination
• Test various approaches to cross-team collaboration

Measuring Organizational Experiments

Customer Impact Metrics:

• Net Promoter Score and customer satisfaction
• Feature delivery velocity and quality
• Time from customer feedback to implemented solution
• Customer support ticket volume and resolution time

Team Health Metrics:

• Employee engagement and satisfaction scores
• Team autonomy and decision-making speed
• Cross-team collaboration effectiveness
• Learning and development progress

Business Outcome Metrics:

• Revenue per employee and productivity measures
• Innovation rate and successful experiment percentage
• Market responsiveness and competitive advantage
• Cost per feature delivered

Common Scaling Pitfalls and Solutions

The Coordination Challenge

Problem: As organizations grow, coordination overhead increases exponentially.

Coolblue’s Solution: Small Domain sizes with clear ownership boundaries minimize coordination needs. Matrix management provides coordination channels without creating bureaucracy.

Implementation: Design Domain boundaries to minimize dependencies. Create explicit coordination mechanisms for the dependencies that do exist.

The Culture Dilution Problem

Problem: Strong startup culture gets diluted as new people join and teams grow.

Coolblue’s Solution: Clear principles like “everything starts with an experiment” guide behavior. Regular experimentation reinforces cultural values.

Implementation: Document and actively teach cultural principles. Use hiring and onboarding processes to reinforce culture. Measure and reward cultural behaviors.

The Innovation Slowdown

Problem: Larger organizations become risk-averse and lose their experimental edge.

Coolblue’s Solution: Institutionalize experimentation as the default approach to change. Make failure acceptable and learning essential.

Implementation: Create safe-to-fail experiments. Celebrate learning from failures. Provide resources and time for experimentation.

Advanced Scaling Patterns

Guild and Community Structures

As Domains proliferate, create cross-cutting communities for knowledge sharing:

Technical Guilds: Groups focused on specific technologies or practices (e.g., security, data engineering, frontend development).

Practice Communities: Cross-Domain groups working on specific business capabilities (e.g., personalization, internationalization).

Leadership Communities: Manager and Domain Boss groups for sharing leadership practices and organizational learning.

Cluster and Assembly Coordination

For complex initiatives requiring multiple Domains:

Clusters: Temporary or permanent groupings of related Domains working on connected capabilities.

Assemblies: Project-based coordination structures for major initiatives spanning multiple Domains.

Service Domains: Specialized Domains that provide services to other Domains rather than directly to customers.

The Future of Organizational Design

Emerging Trends

AI-Enhanced Organization: Using artificial intelligence to optimize team composition, workload distribution, and coordination patterns.

Dynamic Team Formation: Fluid team structures that adapt based on current projects and business needs.

Outcome-Based Organization: Structure optimization based on customer and business outcomes rather than traditional efficiency metrics.

Global Distribution: Organizational designs that work effectively across time zones and cultures.

Preparing for Continuous Evolution

Learning Infrastructure: Systems for capturing and sharing organizational learning across teams and time.

Experimentation Platforms: Tools and processes that make organizational experimentation safe and systematic.

Sensing Mechanisms: Early warning systems that detect when organizational structures need to evolve.

Adaptation Capabilities: Skills and processes for implementing organizational changes quickly and effectively.

Your Organizational Evolution Action Plan

Phase 1: Assessment and Preparation (Month 1-2)

Current State Analysis:

• Map existing team structures and communication patterns
• Assess cultural readiness for experimental approaches
• Identify current coordination pain points and inefficiencies
• Evaluate technical architecture alignment with team structures

Foundation Building:

• Establish clear organizational principles and values
• Create psychological safety for experimentation and failure
• Develop change management capabilities and communication plans
• Build measurement systems for organizational health

Phase 2: Pilot Domain Creation (Month 3-4)

Pilot Selection:

• Choose 2-3 areas for initial Domain creation
• Select teams with experimental mindset and strong customer focus
• Ensure pilot areas have clear customer value streams
• Provide additional support and coaching for pilot Domains

Domain Design:

• Define clear Domain boundaries and ownership
• Establish decision-making authority and escalation paths
• Create coordination mechanisms with other teams
• Set up measurement and feedback systems

Phase 3: Scaling and Optimization (Month 5-8)

Gradual Expansion:

• Create additional Domains based on pilot learnings
• Refine Domain boundaries and coordination mechanisms
• Develop Domain Boss and Development Manager capabilities
• Create communities of practice and knowledge sharing

Continuous Improvement:

• Regular retrospectives on organizational effectiveness
• Ongoing experiments with structure and processes
• Measurement and optimization of coordination patterns
• Investment in leadership development and coaching

Phase 4: Advanced Patterns (Month 9+)

Sophisticated Coordination:

• Implement Guild and Community structures
• Create Cluster and Assembly coordination for complex initiatives
• Develop advanced measurement and optimization capabilities
• Build organizational learning and adaptation systems

Conclusion

Coolblue’s journey demonstrates that organizational design doesn’t have to be a choice between startup agility and enterprise scale. By maintaining an experimental mindset, focusing obsessively on customer experience, and continuously evolving their structure based on learning, they’ve created an organization that scales effectively while preserving innovation capability.

The key insights from Coolblue’s approach align strongly with our operating model framework:

1. Strong cultural foundation enables experimental organizational design
2. Small, autonomous teams with clear ownership boundaries scale better than large hierarchical structures
3. Continuous experimentation with organizational design prevents structure from becoming a constraint
4. Customer obsession provides the North Star for all organizational decisions

As you consider organizational design for your technology teams, remember that structure should serve strategy, not constrain it. Start with experiments, measure customer and team outcomes, and evolve continuously based on what you learn.

The future belongs to organizations that can adapt as quickly as their markets change. By following Coolblue’s example and applying the principles in our operating model framework, you can build organizations that thrive in uncertainty while consistently delivering exceptional customer value.

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This post builds on concepts from our comprehensive operating model framework. For detailed implementation guidance on organizational design, team structures, and culture development, explore the complete framework documentation.