Can you give an example of how you achieve alignment when working on a project across multiple teams? How do you define the role of an EM in this context?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Problem: company-wide focus shift came with the layoff. Instead of global
expansion, the company steer towards operation efficiency. My team need to drop
projects for expansion and aggressively prioritize cost reduction projects.
Action: I was invited to a meeting with eng and product leaders to fully
understand the reason and new goals for the shift; I also made sure I understood
how the new priorities aligned with the company’s plan to success. Then for each
sub-team owning a sub-area, I explained the company’s plan to success under the
new macro economy, new strategy of operating with efficiency and impact on the
team’s roadmap. I had 1-1s with eng to make sure they bought into the new vision
and plan. Some eng had doubts in some of the new operational goals - for doubts
on technical goals I had deep dive sessions with engineers to assure them that
the goals are realistic and reasonable; for doubts on company’s mission I
explained to them that the realignment is just a temporary set up and that
focusing on operation efficiency in short term would better prepare us for the
company’s vision in the long run. I also shared the new focus for other teams
and how they fit into the company’s new plan to success along with our teams’.
Results: the team was in general aligned on the new vision, some even said that
it made more sense than the previous one; the team switched gear to execute the
refined project roadmap within 2 weeks.

Anonymous · Answer

Before alignment comes clarity. Got the PM and Architect to clearly write
requirements and milestones. Ensured all interfaces between teams are agreed
upon. Then sequenced so that there are early integrations to surface any misses
early on.

Anonymous · Answer

While working on a project, cutting across multiple teams, as a first step, I
would ask the team working on the project to come up with a single architecture
document, collaborating among themselves. We would have the architecture guild
or the review team, review the architecture, get their feedback and incorporate
their feedback and get their sing up on the architecture. This gives us the
confidence that multiples eyes have had a look at the architecture and are okay
with the path that the team is taking, while working on the project. For
tracking if we are on right track, the individual teams would run a daily
standup meeting, whose intent is to quickly check, the progress each individuals
is making in the team and see if there are any impediments and find a way
forward for this. Since multiple teams are involved, I would run a scrum of
scrums, where leads of each teams come together on a daily basis to update the
progress each team is making. We could also create a dashboard to get an overall
view of the progress made by each teams to see if we are on track for the
commitment.

Can you give an example of how you achieve alignment when working on a project across multiple teams? How do you define the role of an EM in this context?

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