Unless you work on a very small Product team—anything less than 10 people—you’ve experienced the need for cross-team collaboration. Here at HubSpot, our Product team is growing rapidly. This growth provides an immeasurable amount of benefits, but as these hundreds of small autonomous teams (2-10 people) build software, a challenge is introduced: how can we collaborate effectively across teams?
This post is designed to present a simple framework to help people work better together. By implementing some of the tactics mentioned here and keeping an eye on cross-team collaboration, we believe that organizations can be more effective.
First, let’s talk about single-team projects and what makes them relatively simple. In single team projects, there is one owner, the team is familiar with one another, priorities are clear, and projects are relatively easy to technically scope. Single-team projects are almost “automatic” to well-functioning product teams and are some of the simplest to execute on.
As an organization’s product grows, though, the balance starts to shift from mostly single-team projects to almost exclusively cross-team projects. Teams become more interconnected and depend on one another to succeed. As the HubSpot Product team has grown, this has certainly been the case.
What makes cross-team projects challenging are, not coincidentally, the same things that make single-team projects simple. Teams have less rapport with one another than they do within their own team, which can cause a lack of trust and overall effectiveness. Multiple owners are introduced, each with unique expectations of how they want the project to succeed. Finally, priorities outside of the cross-team project can be unclear.
We’ve found that in order to make a cross-team project successful, you need:
Download: Cross-Team Alignment Kickoff One-Pager
More than anything, trust is the foundation of the kind of partnerships that are required for cross-team collaboration. Each participating team needs to believe that the others are approaching the project with goodwill and a shared understanding of how success benefits the customer. However, many people misunderstand trust. Here’s what we’ve realized when it comes to building trust across teams:
Finally, the project needs a "lead team" and a "follow team". If there are five teams involved, there needs to be one "lead team" and four "follow teams".
Usually in a cross-team project, there are usually two groups of people: (1) the group that initiates the conversation and the idea and (2) another team whose collaboration is required. If we want to set the project up for success, there are a number of questions that need to be answered and roles that need to be filled.
The initiating team is the ultimate decision maker and should control speed, scoping, and own the release. For what it's worth, we have seen a "follow team" effectively take over as the lead mid-project. It works. It just needs to be communicated clearly and understood by everyone involved.
Between the lead and follow teams, make sure the following roles are filled by at least one directly responsible individual (DRI):
No team works within a vacuum. There are constantly things that arise that can delay or potentially even enhance the delivery of a project.
It’s critical for each team, whether they are the initiator or the collaborator(s), to understand their own priorities/roadmap clearly. Without a clear understanding of priorities, teams can unintentionally over-commit, avoid any type of commitment, or develop resentment if they don’t understand how a cross-functional project fits into their overall mission.
One of the best ways to communicate priorities is to carve out a meeting early on—it can be short (20 - 30 minutes)—for each team to share their roadmap at a high level. Think months and quarters, rather than weeks or sprints. It may not seem important to inform the other team about the work you are taking on outside of the project at hand, but it is. Understanding the context that others teams are working in helps each team involved empathize when something is taking longer than expected, when teams may seem distracted from the cross-team project at hand, or when there’s a mismatch of urgency.
Having shared team priorities, it’s important for the initiators to make sure that everyone is on the same page about two major questions:
The onus is on the initiator to help the collaborators make sure that everyone involved in the project has the basic information they need to prioritize their contributions and communicate to their other stakeholders why participating in this project fits within their larger vision/mission. It may seem redundant, but many projects fall apart because of simple miscommunications at the earliest stages of the project.
In the same vein as the previous question, just because a kickoff has gone well doesn’t necessarily mean that each team is whole-heartedly committed. It’s up to the initiators to make sure that collaborators are actively bought in, rather than just assuming that because another team likes the idea that they are on board with the entire project plan. More than likely, they aren’t! And that’s ok. Uncovering mismatched expectations, unbalanced priorities, or disagreements/confusion around implementation upfront is common and healthy.
Cross-team projects aren’t easy, and as organizations scale they grow even more complex. In order to set up a project for success, it’s paramount to dedicate focus and energy on the process even more than the project. Trust, a unified understanding of roles within the project, and a shared empathy for priorities will help make these tricky projects easier to execute.