PITA 054
ICEBREAKER: Summer Jams
English Teacher, Sophie Lloyd’s ‘imposter syndrome’, Hong Kong Ping Pong, People Disco Machine’s ‘Hypontize’, My Baby, Liza Minelli in Cabaret, A Star, The Interrupters, Culture Shock, Shellac’s final album
Topic 1: So much that already exists and needs to be supported, and yet, new stuff required. What’s the best way to organise teams to deal with this?
Lisa Long’s talk on Killing Zombies/Tending your garden
Separating teams to BAU and New Development is a solution. But it’s not a good solution for lots of reasons - mostly because no one ever wants to be on the BAU team.
There’s a fallacy about it being easy to kill products and spin something new up
Focus on your ICP. Anything outside it, kill it or put it into maintenance mode (if B2B contracts require it being kept alive). Or spin in out into a separate corp/P&L
Topic 2: How do you combat boredom? Saying the same thing again, and again...
People falling into the same habits over and over, after committing to change… but not sticking with it
Can anyone impose/force/tell them to work a different way?
In this case, the system usually rewards the behaviours that people default back to
Solve the problems that they believe exist/care about - you can’t get people to do anything without that as a prerequisite
Track objectives - and show them where they’re failing
Use Retros for this
If all else fails - and if you’re in a financial position to do so - move on
Topic 3: How to not get sucked into delivery detail when colocated with a delivery team (or should we?)
Give them a vision of the big picture
How do you -a sa group - want to work together? Emily Webber’s Capability Comb & Christina Wodtke’s Team Charter (from The Team That Managed Itself) exercises are good for this
How can you communicate this challenge in their language?
Whose village are y’all in? Yours, theirs, or someone else’s? Meet them where they are.
Topic 4: Component teams, not Feature teams. Any ways (financial or otherwise) to show that Feature teams work better?
Components are not aligned with the customer
Don’t focus on components or features - focus on outcomes/results, and give teams missions around that. The component or feature may be a means to that end - but what you’re working on achieving is not the thing, but the customer & business effect.
Map out the end to end experience - User Story Maps/Journey Maps/Service blueprints are all amazing for this - to show where the effort is needed.
Understand WHY it’s structured that way - and if it’s working as intended