Sometimes when I review some of the posts that I create, it seems like something that is so obvious, why would there be a need to even create such a post; everybody would already know this. And then, one comes across cases where it becomes clear that some people do not really know the contents of the post, that they get into problems which have been described in some of the posts. So the idea of such posts is that people read these, see whether this applies to their current situation, and work out any changes if required. If they are doing things superior to what is being written about in the post, then I would be really grateful if they can update in the comments.
For any team that has been working for some time, especially in the area of product development, there will always be the need for working with external parties. These can be other teams within the organization that depend on your product, or provide you with a component. There can be teams outside the organization with whom you are coordinating with for either inputs or outputs. For example, a simple case was whereby the marketing team had made a deal with a phone manufacturer for loading the product as a pre-loaded application on the phone (yes, the same type of product that many reviews call bloatware, and which users sometimes are unable to uninstall when they get the phone in their hands).
You might think that this is a simple transaction, you provide the product to them and they incorporate it into their phone, with schedules being the major tracking. However, life is not so easy many times. In many cases, we have had to add tracking parameters to the product which let us monitor how many times users loaded the product that was on the phone (as opposed to getting the same product from another source, or buying from us, and so on). All of this requires coordination (and there can be numerous cases where such type of changes and coordination needs to happen).
When you are dealing with teams that are outside of your organization, you should never make the mistake of assuming that they work with the same culture as teams within your organization.
Coordinating with such teams needs to ensure a proper system of tracking requirements, changes, issues, closing issues, defects, status and setting the grounds for acceptability testing (to ensure that both teams are in agreement over what is needed to finally state that the product is good to go).
- There is a need to define responsibilities and contact details, who does what on either side
- With these responsibilities, a further need to map ongoing work to people along with timelines and what the output should be like
- Set up regular meetings for discussing ongoing issues, working through the schedule, deliverables, action items, and escalations
- As work proceeds, define the changing mix of people involved in the discussions (for example, earlier states may have a mix of development and marketing people, and later, when work is ongoing, more of development and testing people from both sides)
This is the general idea of how you go about working with people from outside your organization; the exact granular details of this coordination would vary from team to team, and from project to project.
For any team that has been working for some time, especially in the area of product development, there will always be the need for working with external parties. These can be other teams within the organization that depend on your product, or provide you with a component. There can be teams outside the organization with whom you are coordinating with for either inputs or outputs. For example, a simple case was whereby the marketing team had made a deal with a phone manufacturer for loading the product as a pre-loaded application on the phone (yes, the same type of product that many reviews call bloatware, and which users sometimes are unable to uninstall when they get the phone in their hands).
You might think that this is a simple transaction, you provide the product to them and they incorporate it into their phone, with schedules being the major tracking. However, life is not so easy many times. In many cases, we have had to add tracking parameters to the product which let us monitor how many times users loaded the product that was on the phone (as opposed to getting the same product from another source, or buying from us, and so on). All of this requires coordination (and there can be numerous cases where such type of changes and coordination needs to happen).
When you are dealing with teams that are outside of your organization, you should never make the mistake of assuming that they work with the same culture as teams within your organization.
Coordinating with such teams needs to ensure a proper system of tracking requirements, changes, issues, closing issues, defects, status and setting the grounds for acceptability testing (to ensure that both teams are in agreement over what is needed to finally state that the product is good to go).
- There is a need to define responsibilities and contact details, who does what on either side
- With these responsibilities, a further need to map ongoing work to people along with timelines and what the output should be like
- Set up regular meetings for discussing ongoing issues, working through the schedule, deliverables, action items, and escalations
- As work proceeds, define the changing mix of people involved in the discussions (for example, earlier states may have a mix of development and marketing people, and later, when work is ongoing, more of development and testing people from both sides)
This is the general idea of how you go about working with people from outside your organization; the exact granular details of this coordination would vary from team to team, and from project to project.
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