Save your ideas from failing, by fixing engineering collaboration

Good ideas can fail in delivering value due to bad execution. Rooted at the core of the problem is bad collaboration.

Most average idea deliver phenomenal business impact as long as there is good collaboration.

I have seen the good, bad and the ugly when it comes to collaboration across many multi year projects. Here are some red flags to watch out when multiple teams are collaborating on a project to identify .

The answer to ‘why are you doing this project?’

When two or more teams participate in delivering a project, ensure that they feel like partners. Grab the POC from each of the teams and ask this question - “Why are you doing this project?”. If the answer aligns with the business value from doing the project, it is a good signal. If the answer is more like “Team A wants us to do this”, then start to dig deeper.

Word count the word ‘own’ in meetings

Attend a few meetings for the project. If discussions reuse the word “own”, you have got some work to do. Ownership is great and people should own up the the success and failure of the project. However, if the conversations are around who owns a specific piece of technology, pay closer attention. There may be more going on that just purely a technical conversation.

Unilateral communications

For a project consisting of 3 teams, you should see each team talk about project A to their management & share it as part of their upward & peer updates. If you see only a single team updating their leadership and communicating their progress via emails, it is a good sign that not everyone is onboard or feels the participation.

As leaders, paying close attention to fixing these issues upfront can save a lot of time, energy and saved relationships.