![]() Bezos structured Amazon so that teams were as independent as possible. If you ever wonder why Bezos took such a hard line on his API mandate in 2002, this probably factored into it. ![]() A little collaboration is fine, but excessive collaboration between teams is a sign your organization isn’t structured well. We’ll talk more about how to structure these solutions in the second blog post in this series.Ĭollaboration sounds great, but it’s something you want to actively be combating between teams. Looking back in retrospect, it was as obvious as math what happened, but I see organizations fall into this trap over and over. The solution to this was to eventually define the interaction models between teams, reduce dependencies, and add some structure to prioritization and communication. We all tried heroically to make it work, but the system was rigged - there wasn’t a way to accomplish these larger projects. I know, because I was one of the “best project managers”, so I got put on many of those large projects - and they were systematically impossible to execute on. After a few years, the increasing number of teams made it more and more difficult to manage dependencies between teams, to the point that it eventually became impossible to accomplish any large project within the organization. As the engineering organization grew, we encouraged a collaborative culture and rewarded people for collaboration between teams (it was even part of our promotion criteria - you can blame that on me!). I observed an example of this at New Relic. Otherwise, the communication burden on teams will grow at an exponential rate, and the increasing complexity will degrade the effectiveness of the company. As they grow, the communication patterns within the company must necessarily switch to being segmented and defined. ![]() Companies start out with many-to-many communication. And where that is not true, you need some structure to ensure the team can get what it needs in a way that will scale with the organization’s growth.Īs companies grow, communication and dependencies proliferate. To the maximum extent possible, teams should have what they need to succeed within the borders of their team. Why minimize collaboration between teams? A team that doesn’t collaborate often really isn’t a team at all. And collaborative teams feel great to be a part of - everyone shares the same victories and accomplishments together. People can go on vacation or leave without as much disruption. When someone leaves the team, the fact that others have a shared understanding of the work means the team can survive and continue to work effectively. They are more innovative, because the interplay between people as they work on the same goal helps generate more diverse thinking and improve decision-making. Team members have overlapping areas of knowledge, so they can critique each other’s work and help each other grow. This gives team members a better ability to focus and coordinate their work with each other. This maximizes shared state - everyone has a common understanding of goals, progress, and who is doing what. In general, you should aim to maximize collaboration within teams, and minimize collaboration between teams.Ī collaborative team works together on one or two goals. This manifesto defends silos and challenges the value of collaboration. Most leaders reflexively think of silos as BAD and collaboration as GOOD. “We need to break down silos between departments and get people to collaborate better” - almost every leader everywhere. How to build silos and decrease collaboration (on purpose)
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