Chapter 12: Scaling — From Solo to Small Teams

TenK 6 started as a solo system: one person, six steps, one loop at a time. When a friend joins, a contractor signs on, or you’re suddenly a crew of three to five, many projects collapse under the weight of “team process.” Slack chaos, scattered boards, endless syncs—momentum dies in overhead. The good news: TenK 6 scales without turning into bureaucracy.

Why Teams Stall

Add people and three new problems appear. Visibility drops—nobody knows who’s doing what. Coordination slips—tasks overlap or fall through cracks. Accountability blurs—everyone assumes someone else will move the loop. Big companies solve this with meetings and roadmaps. Indie teams need something lighter.

Scale the Loop, Not the Overhead

Keep the principle: one loop at a time. Make the loop a shared track. List together: brainstorm as a group and capture everyone’s ideas. Pick one with a clear owner. Different people can ship pieces, but the owner stays accountable for the loop. Split the asking—each member gathers feedback from their own network. Track metrics in one visible place. Rotate who shares the story each week. Use async updates to reduce meetings: a daily two‑line check‑in (“what I shipped, what’s blocked”) keeps momentum visible.

Crew Mode in Practice

Use one loop board instead of a hundred task tickets. Track the loop itself with one column per step: List, Pick, Ship, Ask, Measure, Share. Assign a loop owner; they don’t do all the work, but they are accountable end‑to‑end. Keep an evidence folder for screenshots, notes, and metrics—this becomes your collective memory. Close the week with a fifteen‑minute retro: what did we ship, ask, measure, and share? Capture learning before the next loop. If you hit conflict on priorities, defer to the loop’s pick. New ideas can live in the next list—don’t split the current loop across two goals.

Example: Indie10k Crew

When we tested team mode, we didn’t add features—we added constraints. One loop at a time for three people. A shared six‑step board. A rotating storyteller. Instead of three people sprinting in different directions, we had three people compounding one direction.

Micro‑Exercise

If you’re two or more, create a shared six‑step board. Assign an owner for the current loop. Commit as a team: no new loop until the current one finishes. That’s scaling TenK 6—momentum without meetings.

Next comes sustainability—how to keep looping without burning out.