Communicate, Align, and Collaborate With Others

37 / 46 • Team • This practice was ranked as basic.
Click to read more. • This practice helps to increase
the team's agility.
Click to read more. • This practice helps to increase
the team's effectiveness.
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Ensure alignment with other (development) teams, management, and external stakeholders.

The system that your team develops is meant to integrate with other systems within the context of a wider organization. this requires communication, alignment, and collaboration with others outside the team.

Any development team lives within a larger organization.

There may be other teams that develop systems with which your system needs to interface. There might be teams in charge of infrastructure on which your system needs to be deployed. There may be teams in charge of other business functions such as marketing, production, etc. And your team likely reports to a manager who is ultimately accountable for how your team turns budget into product.

While most members of your team should focus on tasks within the team, it is also important to maintain alignment with the rest of the organization. This requires:

• Frequent communication: Both to gather information from outside the team, and to keep others informed of the progress and possible impediments your team is struggling with.
• Close collaboration: For certain tasks, you may need to collaborate directly with people in other teams offering specific expertise or skills
• Integrated way of working: When your teams uses methods and tools that are similar to those of other teams or interface with them seamlessly, you will experience less friction at the boundaries of your team

37 / 46 • Team • This practice was ranked as basic.
Click to read more. • This practice helps to increase
the team's agility.
Click to read more. • This practice helps to increase
the team's effectiveness.
Click to read more.