Many organizations think that letting independent development teams manage their own package workflows is efficient …but in practice, it’s not. 

Every team tends to develop “its own way” of versioning, approving, and documenting packages. One might use a NuGet Server, while another stores artifacts on a shared drive.  As an organization grows and code is shared more broadly, this approach breaks down. Developers waste time duplicating existing work and wrestling with mismatched versions. The result: slowed delivery and increased maintenance overhead. 

Fragmented practices also create shadow IT, inconsistent quality, and unclear ownership. While global governance may not always make sense for completely separate divisions, once packages have interlocking dependencies, team-by-team autonomy fails. Centralized policies and oversight aren’t just nice-to-have. They’re the only way to scale software delivery safely and efficiently.

In this article we’ll look at why team-level package management rules fail to scale and the risks that organizations face as a result. We’ll then see how centralized governance, standardized workflows, and organization-wide policies create a better foundation for growth and effective package management. 

Team-Level Autonomy Feels Productive.. Until It Doesn’t 

Teams often create their own package workflows, registries, and approval rules, thinking this is the most efficient approach. But the fact is, when every group operates differently, it’s not actually efficient, it’s fragmented. Sure, it starts as productive autonomy, but winds up as duplication, and wasted effort. 

Package discovery is often informal. It’s driven by Slack threads, word of mouth, or outdated documentation. The end result is valuable, internal code going unnoticed. Developers end up rebuilding functionality that already exists, and coming up with solutions to problems that have already been solved elsewhere. This is all wasted time that could be better spent innovating and delivering new features. 

Maintaining multiple registries and CI/CD setups adds even more friction on top of that. Onboarding new team members takes longer, and tooling conflicts become more frequent. Suddenly, the flexibility that once seemed empowering turns into inefficiency and confusion. When pipelines or tools clash, developers spend hours troubleshooting instead of building features, while platform or DevOps engineers step in to reconcile issues. This is time that could go toward automation or new code. In larger organizations, these conflicts can ripple across teams, consuming days or even weeks of combined effort. Beyond this wasted time, these issues also create real risks that can threaten the organization. 

Fragmented Practices Create Real Risks 

Team-level autonomy isn’t just a matter of being inefficient; it introduces actual risk. Security and compliance efforts remain inconsistent as siloed teams use different tools for vulnerability scans or license checks …or just skip them entirely. Engineers end up manually tracking packages across repos, increasing cognitive load, and slowing decisions. Some take shortcuts or avoid using untrusted internal packages, often duplicating work. Vulnerabilities are discovered late, creating a culture of reactive remediation over proactive prevention. All of this ends up leaving the organization exposed to avoidable risks. 

Trust in internal packages suffers when ownership, quality, and approval standards vary from team to team. Developers hesitate to use shared libraries, worried about potential instability or hidden issues. This lack of confidence drives them to rebuild rather than reuse, which is a big part of where the duplication and slowed development stems from.  

Shadow IT and inconsistent practices make matters worse. Teams independently adopt OSS libraries, internal tools, or registries without coordination. This creates blind spots across the organization. The result is greater exposure to security vulnerabilities, non-compliant licenses, and operational errors. This translates to even further costs and slowed delivery.  

Central Governance Is the Only Way Forward 

Centralized governance provides the structure teams need to work efficiently. This means implementing: 

• Role-based access controls 
• Organization-wide policies 
• Standardized approval workflow

Organizations introducing this will see reduced policy drift while still allowing teams to innovate within clear, safe boundaries. 

Having a centralized registry with metadata tracking makes it easy for developers to discover and reuse packages while improving auditability and compliance. Standardized CI/CD pipelines, naming conventions, and versioning rules further reduce duplicated effort. They also simplify onboarding, and minimize operational friction across the organization. 

Using Proget as a Centrally Managed Package Repository lets organizations can take practical steps: 

⭐ Create a centrally managed source for all internal packages: Every team publishes and consumes from a single source of truth. 

⭐ Apply role-based access controls and approval workflows: Only authorized teams or developers can publish packages. This will prevent shadow IT and reduce risk. 

⭐ Standardize versioning, naming, and CI/CD conventions across teams: Package consumption becomes predictable and reduces integration errors. 

⭐ Establish proactive security: This means setting up curated feeds, pre-download vulnerability scanning, and license enforcement policies. 

⭐ Track usage and metadata centrally: This enhances auditability, speeds incident response, and boosts cross-team visibility. 

By implementing these practices, teams can focus on building software instead of navigating fragmented workflows, security risks, or unclear ownership. Organizations with centralized governance in motion will see improved collaboration, faster delivery, and sustainable long-term growth. 

Scaling Safely with Centralized Package Management

Team-level autonomy sounds great, but without central oversight, it often just means inefficiency, risk, and confusion as the organization grows. Fragmented workflows, scattered package discovery, duplicated effort, and inconsistent security slow development and create unnecessary headaches.

Central governance with clear workflows and org-wide policies changes that. A unified registry, role-based access, approval steps, and centralized metadata make package discovery, reuse, and compliance predictable. Teams can focus on building software, not untangling chaos, and the organization can scale more smoothly.

If this sounds familiar, learn how your organization stacks up with our guide “Package Management at Scale”. It walks you through how to evaluate your current practices, and provides a clear roadmap for implementing a secure and scalable package management strategy across your teams.  Get your free copy now!

Or, take the next step and implement a CMPR solution in your own organization using ProGet. You can start a 30-day free trial of ProGet Basic and see how centralized package management streamlines workflows, improves compliance, and boosts developer productivity firsthand.