Dahlia Bock

Layered teams and how to do it wrong

I have previously expressed my disapproval of layered teams in the past, so I won't do it again. (Who are we kidding...)

Here's a list of things you can do so that everything will go as smoothly wrong as possible:

1. Limit communication between teams to the 'leads'. Don't encourage each team member to learn how to collaborate with other teams without depending on their 'lead'.
2. Allow each person to go off into a silo and develop something and declare that it is done without confirming that it is consumable by other teams.
3. Collaborate on API design? That's absurd.
4. Make sure your team members don't learn the domain and understand what they are building. This includes not talking to the business people (Refer to #1).
5. When actual communication is needed between teams and their leads aren't around to facilitate the discussion, use a ticketing system as a starting point and direct all future communication there. Face-to-face conversations should be kept to a minimum because everything needs to be tracked and we can't track real conversations.

I think teamwork has just been redefined. Sigh.