Enabling high-performing teams to succeed in complex technology-enabled transformations

Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to serve large organisations leading dozens of teams in a variety of configurations in complex technology-enabled transformations. I have been fortunate to lead most of these teams to successful outcomes, but I have also experienced some challenges and failures. These experiences have taught me that building and positioning teams for success is not straightforward, and it requires more than just having a talented pool of professionals. This is especially true in complex transformations. In this article, I will share some of my main learnings through the years and offer some practical recommendations for common challenges faced when building high-performing teams to execute complex engagements.

1. Understand and recognise the complexity of the engagement in the context of the culture, readiness, and maturity of the organisation. This understanding should inform the solution process, the engagement approach and thus the team requirements. The team must be assembled and equipped according to the solution and engagement model requirements and adjusted to the organisation's capabilities and maturity level. For instance, less mature organisations may require stronger product/project management or change management, more frequent touch points for solution alignment and planning, ways of working coaching, or senior guidance for appropriate decision-making and risk management. Another example is an organisation with a siloed structure trying to implement a new enterprise solution that requires project managers and solution architects with more sophisticated soft skills to navigate political sensitiveness and bring consensus. In my experience, these aspects are often overlooked, resulting in understaffed teams or teams with misaligned soft skills, for instance.

2. Ensure that the team comprehends and stays aligned with the technical delivery approach. In complex delivery, where multiple teams work on interdependent products or deliverables, it is critical to ensure everyone understands how the overall solution will come together and what the "long poles in the tent" are. Collaboratively establish and maintain the critical path, identify key dependencies, and define clear boundaries for roles and responsibilities. This comprehensive approach enables effective expectation setting, tracking & monitoring, risk management, and course correction throughout the program. Some of the biggest issues in many engagements are delays caused by a lack of synchronism with different teams working in silos towards different roadmaps, leading to mismatched milestones, and missed interdependences.

3. Do not take ways of working for granted, especially when implementing innovative solutions or dealing with complex solutions spanning multiple functional domains, technologies, and platforms. Thoroughly assess the scope of work and invest time with the involved teams to ensure alignment on boundaries, communication protocols, artifacts, and synchronization points in planning and decision-making. Simple elements such as differences in terminology, documentation standards, or the way teams create the work breakdown structure (WBS) or the hierarchy in terms of epics, stories and issues can generate significant overhead and confusion when integrating work across multiple teams. Consider targeted coaching on ways of working, as it can generate significant benefits in fluidity and collaboration across the teams.

4. Be mindful of the importance of team configuration. Assemble teams that are fit for purpose and foster the expected behaviours of collaboration and commitment to outcomes. Identify key roles that will hold the team and the solution together and ensure they establish a cohesive backbone to cover technical and functional requirements throughout the delivery lifecycle. Do not compromise on the skillset required for the backbone. Think of the team organisation in terms of the lifecycle (be it project-driven or product-driven) and how the backbone supports each stage of the lifecycle. This is critical because the functional, technical, and soft skills involved in the delivery will vary depending on which stage of the lifecycle, thus the backbone provides input for informed decisions about the elasticity of the team. Once the elements of the backbone are well-defined, work collaboratively with them to establish the remaining roster, which should typically include specialists for specific requirements across different parts of the delivery. Unfortunately, teams are often assembled with a short line of sight considering only immediate needs, leading to a lack of forward-view planning and preparation.

5. Recognise the importance of team alignment around clearly defined domains of work. This alignment is critical to ensure orchestrated and efficient work across multiple teams. This also prevents the situation of “no man’s land” or “grey areas” between teams. A good practice is to align teams around platforms, products, and value streams so each team works within well-defined boundaries. With the boundaries established, make sure the integration points and synch points with related teams are well covered to allow for fluid cross-team communication and collaboration. For instance, in complex data integration solutions, often different teams will be working on source and target systems, leaving many “grey areas” in between to be agreed, and a potential “no man’s land” situation related to who is responsible to design and build the reconciliation approach between source and target.

6. Team alignment and configuration also have significant impacts on capabilities building, talent optimization, and efficiency. The right internal organization of each team profoundly affects the ability to develop skills in its members, while the right alignment of teams enables a more stable flow of work, benefiting learning and skills development while reducing handovers and overhead. Another important aspect of team alignment and configuration is that it has a profound impact on the ability to multiply the effectiveness of specialists, particularly in an environment with a shortage of skills. For instance, senior architects and engineers with deep skills in frameworks and technologies may be sitting in a centralised team providing guidance and acting as design decision-makers while more generalist architects and engineers spread in the other teams. The same rationale could be applied to deep functional experts in core banking modules, with them sitting in a centralised team providing guidance and validating the work of more generalist business analysts spread in the other teams.

7. Acknowledge the impacts of the post-COVID reality of work-from-home and hybrid work. The reduction of face-to-face interaction requires significant adjustments in communication, orchestration, and checkpoint controls, particularly for the delivery of complex transformation programs. In a traditional onsite set-up, for instance, during the design of complex solutions, a facilitator can capture reactions and feedback from the teams involved in a much more dynamic way, including non-verbal clues about the clarity or level of comfort related to the design in a discussion. The same exercise in a remote set-up requires a considerably different approach, in terms of the engagement of team members and stakeholders. Teams need more sophisticated collaboration tools, better network connections, and alternative asynchronous communication channels. Also, the facilitator must do a more proactive and eventually offline engagement with individual team members to capture nuanced feedback. This implies more refined soft skills, fine-tuned ways of working, and well-established channels, tools, and protocols for collaboration. It also requires increased regular check-ins to ensure transparency and alignment among team members and mitigation of potential communication gaps.

8. When working with distributed delivery teams, and particularly when leveraging offshore capabilities, it is critical to build a trusted partnership between onshore teams and offshore teams. Complex transformations and product-driven delivery require the offshore teams involved at the forefront of the solution design and planning, sharing ownership and responsibility with the onshore teams. This involves the creation of virtual squads with members of the onshore and offshore locations, demanding clear communication channels, leveraging technology for seamless collaboration, adjusting work dynamics to accommodate time zone impacts and promoting cultural and language awareness to effectively bridge geographical cross-countries boundaries. Leadership from onshore and offshore locations play a critical role to provide sponsorship, fostering collaboration and addressing issues and challenges in a timely and definitive manner.

9. Establish a solid foundation and trust the process. With a solid foundation, it is easier for teams to build trust in the process and evolve from that. However, it’s important to acknowledge that practices may not be mature enough at the start, so remain attentive and open to adaptation and be ready to intervene to change course, if needed. Teams’ configurations or alignments might have to change in accordance with uncovered constraints, unexpected events such as illness or resignations, or changes in priorities. Encourage a culture of open communication to quickly identify signs of change in circumstances or struggling dynamics, and foster continuous learning, iteration, and improvement to empower team members to address challenges as they arise.

10. In this process, enforce guiding principles and give the team space to work out solutions. Especially in large engagements, be prepared to handle conflicts as the work progress. It is normal and should not be avoided. One typical area of conflict arises between vertical and horizontal responsibilities, for instance, product teams focused on specific features for a specific release in conflict with the platform team providing supporting capabilities and the enterprise architects looking to ensure a build-for-reuse perspective. Being present, providing guiding principles and empowering the team members to conduct productive debates, make decisions, take ownership, and trust their judgment fosters a culture of collaboration, motivation, and continuous improvement.

11. Complex transformations are long-term journeys, so ensure that regular check-ins are performed to gauge well-being, mental health, and team engagement. This is particularly critical in a set-up with a hybrid and remote workforce. Use formal and informal channels and tools to promote open and honest conversations, work-life balance, and a supportive environment where team members feel heard and valued, contributing to overall team satisfaction. Frequent informal check-ins, virtual happy hours, shorter and more frequent town halls, and identification of well-being champions in the team are some useful tactics to keep good track of the state of mind and energy level of the team. Also, variations in metrics such as a drop in velocity and quality might indicate symptoms of team burnout, poor team dynamics or low morale and engagement that should not be overlooked.

12. Regularly recognise and celebrate individual and collective contributions to further enhance team morale. Ensure to leverage formal and informal recognition mechanisms. Be aware to balance individual and collective recognitions. Creative “off-cycle” awards such as best team, best teammate, best idea of the month, best mentor, and other recognitions can help to reinforce behaviours and build trust in the team. A good practice is involving the team members to vote for the colleagues to be awarded. Prizes can be a nice couple’s dinner or a pair of tickets for the theatre, for instance. Work on the ideas with HR and internal controls to ensure compliance with policies. One important aspect, however, is to ensure that these “off-cycle” recognitions are not perceived as consolation prizes, especially for high-potential and high-performing individuals, so ensure that the formal career progression is being properly taken care.

13. Lastly, establish a robust governance framework to ensure executive engagement for key decision-making and proper escalation of risks and issues. Establish clear lines of communication, determine clear authority and delegation levels, conduct regular check-ins with key stakeholders, and promote transparency in decision-making processes to maintain momentum and prevent potential setbacks. More importantly, governance must be set up in a way to enable and guide the teams, instead of being viewed as auditors and police. In my experience this is one of the trickiest challenges, requiring fine-tuned sensibility to balance accountability and autonomy, with open and fluid communications across the different levels. When mishandled, especially in high-risk and high-visible engagements, governance bodies may quickly become forums to be avoided by teams which leads to frequent filtering of risks and messages, ultimately undermining the success of the engagements.

In conclusion, my journey through successful and challenging engagements has provided me with valuable insights into building and leading teams for complex IT engagements. It taught me that success goes beyond having a talented team; it requires a deep understanding of the engagement purpose and complexity, alignment with the technical delivery approach, and attention to ways of working. Team configuration, alignment, and the impacts of remote work, distributed teams and multicultural aspects also play vital roles. Additionally, establishing a solid foundation, empowering teams to find solutions, and fostering a culture of open communication and continuous improvement is essential, as it is sustaining team well-being, recognising contributions, celebrating achievements, and implementing a robust governance framework.

The weight and impact of each of these aspects certainly varied across my engagements, but all of them were important to explain successes and failures to lead my teams and I believe are valuable insights for anyone leading teams to deliver complex technology-enabled engagements.