Got Agile teams... No Delivery!

multi team dependencies affect delivery

Multi-team coordination

If you're working in an environment where multiple teams and /or departments are required to generate end to end value. You've probably experienced the sense or the sentiment that the teams are under-performing.

There's no shortage of requests, but they seem to fall into a black hole. We never know when anything will be done. People seem busy, but we're just not getting the right things done at the right time.

You are not alone. This is a problem relating to the coordination of multiple teams towards a single purpose.

One of the biggest problems I see where coordinated delivery is happening, is that each team has their own priorities. And of course, the priorities conflict with those of dependent teams, which means when it comes time to work with each other,  we hear, "We're busy working on something else! We'll only be able to work on that in 2 months time!"

Dependency delays are a key factor in the length of time it takes for a piece of work to be completed, and most often in practice are completely out of the hands of those performing the work. These delays give the impression teams are slow, when actually they're just working on something else, as directed.

Have you considered...

1. Is there a shared understanding of the delivery challenges, between the teams, the managers and the stakeholders?

2. Is there clear visibility of the value items that represent stakeholder requests above the team level, so that we can track requests from idea to impact?

3. Do we have interactions that keep teams and leadership in sync around priorities, and dependencies?

4. Are we creating enough focus on what is important to finish next at this level?

Need assistance?

If you need to find better ways to coordinate effort in the world of multi team delivery, LevelUp can help you. We run public and in-house workshops that tackle these issues head on. Also, if workshops aren't your thing, and you're just keen to navigate this space incrementally together with a sparring partner, we offer that too. Looking at your organization through the lens of  Flight Levels®, we can simplify and enhance how coordination works in your specific situation.