Cross-Functional Project Teams

After my last rant, I was asked to identify a “best practice” for the enterprise. If the reader is interested in industry wide best practices, I will provide some links and referneces at the end of this entry, but I have one suggestion that is my own: cross-functional project teams.

I once worked on a supply chain application that managed two billion dollars worth of products. I was managed by an IT manager who was in charge of IT services for the marketing group. Our servers were being managed by an IT infrastructure group. The infrastructure group was eligible for a yearly bonus that was based on server uptime. In our experience, server uptime is not the same as application uptime. This was before the .NET framework. Our DLLs would crash, and the only answer was to reboot the server. The server team would refuse to reboot the server even if trucks were piling up on the docks while the application was down.

Once, the server team closed a port on a router that was required by our application and it took two working days to track down the problem. The server team did not have access to our application documents and did not know that this change would bring down the application.

It is not a good idea to organize teams around a technical area of concern. When there is a problem in such an environment, teams often work at cross-purposes. The server guys blame the applications, and the developers blame the server guys. Teams should be organized around the application and the business it serves. Bonuses should be based on how well the business runs not on how well the technology runs. IT staff should not be isolated from users or from the business in their own silos – they should be required to meet, interact with and be accountable to the business. IT staff should be encouraged to understand the ecosystem they are part of, and measure their success in terms more meaningful than mere performance metrics.

A Cross-section of Best Practice Ideas:

Extreme Programming
Steve McConnell
RUP
Microsoft Solutons Framework
ITIL