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.
| 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. |
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.