Criteria for Running Projects

Projects refer to temporary, collaborative efforts designed to achieve specific goals that cannot be accomplished by individual teams alone. These projects often involve complex tasks that require a combination of skills, resources, and knowledge from different areas within the organisation.

Goal

The primary purpose of running projects is to build features or solutions that span multiple teams. They are designed to address cross-functional requirements that exceed the scope of single teams, leveraging diverse expertise for innovative solutions.

Context

The point of creating autonomous teams is to enable them to work independently and deliver value without dependencies on other teams. However, there are times when you need to run projects to achieve specific goals that cannot be accomplished by individual teams alone. Projects are temporary, collaborative efforts that bring together people from different areas of the organisation to work towards a common objective.

Collaboration Formats

Format	Description	Best Suited For
Stream Team Coordination	Stream Teams remain independent but the objectives of one or more of the Stream Teams are updated to align with the objectives of the project.	Situations where the boundaries of work across teams are well understood and teams can work independently on their separate parts.
Combined Stream Teams	Stream Teams are combined into a single team for the duration of the project.	Situations where the work is not well understood and the teams need to work together to understand the problem and solution.

Program Management

Some initiatives genuinely cut across the whole organisation:

Regulatory deadlines that require coordinated changes across multiple Stream Teams.
Platform migrations that need to be sequenced carefully across consumers.
Acquisitions and integrations that touch every part of the business.

For these, a small Program Management team, typically a handful of people, coordinates the work across teams using either of the collaboration formats above. Their role is to track dependencies, surface risks early, sequence the moving pieces and report progress to leadership. They do not own the work, the Stream Teams still do, but they own the cross-team coordination.

Inputs

Artifact	Description
DIBBs (Data, Insights, Beliefs, Bets)	The list of bets that the Stream Team is making to achieve their objectives. Some bets may require assistance from other Stream Teams.
Product Strategy	The high-level plan for achieving the product strategy.

Outputs

Artifact	Description	Benefits
OKRs	Updated objectives to reflect the project's goals.	Ensures alignment between the project and the Stream Team's objectives.

Criticisms

Criticism	Description	Mitigation
Reduced ownership and accountability	Autonomous teams may lose focus on their core objectives when frequently pulled into collaborative projects, leading to a dilution of their core objectives and apathy towards outcomes.	Keep projects to a minimum.
Coordination Overhead	The need for coordination across autonomous teams can introduce significant overhead, reducing the teams' agility and slowing down decision-making processes.	Merge the teams into a single team for the duration of the project.
Inconsistent Practices	Different autonomous teams may develop divergent working practices, making collaboration challenging and potentially leading to inefficiencies or integration issues.	Promote the adoption of a core set of practices, tools, and technologies that can serve as a common ground for all teams to facilitate easier collaboration.

Anti-patterns

Frequent Projects: Projects should not happen often. If you find you need to run regular projects then you need to revisit your value stream boundaries.
Scope creep: Allowing the project's goals to expand without proper evaluation.
Neglecting team feedback: Ignoring the insights of team members can lead to missed opportunities and resistance.