Creating a Team in Span

Teams in Span allow you to organize members into groups for reporting, metrics tracking, and collaboration. This guide walks you through how to create and configure a team.

Required Permissions

You must have one of the following roles to create and manage teams:

Key permission notes

• Manage Team Settings — Allows editing a team's name and description. This permission does not grant the ability to add or remove members.

• Member Management — A global permission required to add or remove users from any team. This is separate from team-level settings permissions.

• Manager — Users who have direct reports in your org roster are automatically granted Manager-level permissions for their team.

HRIS/Directory Sync: If your organization has an HRIS or directory integration enabled with team sync, some team fields will be read-only and managed by your HR system. You will see a notice in the UI indicating which fields cannot be edited directly in Span.

Step-by-Step: Creating a Team

1. Navigate to Team Settings

Go to Settings → Team Management in your Span workspace.

2. Create a New Team

Click + New Team and provide:

• Team Name — A unique, descriptive name for the team.

3. Set a Parent Team (optional)

If this team is part of a larger organizational hierarchy, select a Parent Team. This allows Span to reflect your org structure in reporting and roll-up metrics. Circular hierarchies are not permitted.

4. Add Team Members

Use the member management interface to add the people who belong to this team.

Note: You must have the Member Management global permission to add or remove users from a team.

5. Assign a Team Manager

Designate a Team Manager from the team's members. Managers automatically receive the Manager permission group, giving them visibility into their team's data in Span.

After Creating a Team

Once your team is created, Span will begin tracking metrics scoped to that team — including PR cycle time, deployment frequency, and other engineering metrics — based on the activity of the team's members.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I nest teams? Yes. You can create sub-teams by assigning a parent team during setup. This supports multi-level org hierarchies.

What if my teams are managed in an HRIS like Workday or BambooHR? If your organization has an HRIS integration configured, team data may sync automatically. In this case, some fields will be read-only in Span and must be managed in your HR system.

Who can change team membership after a team is created? Any user with the Member Management global permission — typically Owners, Admins, or custom roles explicitly granted that permission.