Aligning with the Teams
Aligning with the Teams refers to the communication and coordination process between Ecosystem teams and Product, Internal Product and Enabling teams to ensure that all efforts are strategically aligned with the broader product vision, strategy, and objectives.
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to ensure a unified direction for the Teams working on different aspects of the ecosystem, ensuring that all teams are aligned with the ecosystem's goals and timelines.
- Improved Coordination: Ensures that all teams are aligned with the company's goals and timelines.
- Increased Efficiency: Reduces redundancy and enhances the utilisation of resources across teams.
Context
Industry Context
An ecosystem requires the coordination of multiple teams working in parallel to build and support the development and delivery of the products and services. Without alignment between these teams, there is a risk of duplication of effort, misalignment of goals, and inefficiencies in resource utilisation. By ensuring that all teams are working towards a common vision and strategy, companies can maximise the impact of their product development efforts.
ZeroBlockers Context
Each team in an ecosystem is focused on their immediate goals. However, an ecosystem is a connected system. What improves outcomes for a single product might hurt the ecosystem as a whole. This is why it is important to align all teams with the broader ecosystem vision, strategy, and objectives.
A key feature of ZeroBlockers is that there is decentralised decision-making. This improves outcomes by allowing teams to make decisions quickly based on their local knowledge. However, this can also lead to misalignment between teams. This is why it is important to have a process in place to ensure that all teams are aligned with the broader ecosystem vision, strategy, and objectives.
Methods
| Practice | Description | Benefits | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem Team Annual Planning | A structured process for setting strategic goals and objectives for the upcoming year. |
| Annually |
| Product Team Annual Planning | A structured process for setting strategic goals and objectives for the upcoming year. |
| Annually |
| Enabling Team Annual Planning | A structured process for setting strategic goals and objectives for the upcoming year. |
| Annually |
| Product Team Quarterly Objective Setting Meetings | Interactive sessions to collaboratively explore the product vision and strategy, and agree on the business objectives for the Product Teams. |
| Quarterly |
| Enabling Team Quarterly Objective Setting Meetings | Interactive sessions to collaboratively explore the product vision and strategy, and agree on the business objectives for the Enabling Teams. |
| Quarterly |
| Weekly Business Review | A recurring meeting focused on assessing progress against predefined metrics, rather than reviewing specific work items. This involves members from all of the teams. |
| Weekly |
| Continuous Product Forecasting | A process for regularly updating forecasts of key metrics and KPIs. |
| Weekly |
Anti-patterns
- Silos and Isolation: Allowing teams to operate in silos without regard for the overall strategy.
- Overcomplication: Making the strategic alignment process so complex that it becomes a barrier to execution.
- Lack of Transparency: Not sharing strategic objectives, progress, or challenges broadly within the organisation.
