Team alignment strategies: A guide to effective teamwork

Whenever I’m upset with my team and feel like I could just ditch them and do things on my own, I hear Velma Kelly from the hit musical “Chicago” signing “I can’t do it alone” in my head as a reminder. Then, I realize that whatever my problem with the development team is, it’s most likely coming from me alone and I simply need to do better.

Perhaps I wrote a poor ticket. Maybe I described the challenge in a murky way. Maybe I didn’t have enough time to ensure that the end result would follow my vision.

All that can be achieved when the team understands the product manager perfectly and the PM has a full grasp of the team’s limits and possibilities. This happens when you achieve team alignment. In this article, you’ll learn more about what team alignment means, how you can build it, and some of the challenges you might face along the way.

What does team alignment mean?

Team alignment is a state where product/development team members understand, agree upon, and are committed to achieving clearly defined goals. It involves ensuring that everyone’s working towards the same objectives with a shared understanding of their roles, responsibilities, the processes they need to follow, as well as how the final outcome should work, look, and feel.

Benefits of achieving team alignment

Successful aliment results in:

• Closer collaboration — When team members are aligned, they communicate effectively, and support each other. Team members are informed on the progress of a given initiative and the challenges/unknowns to overcome
• Increased efficiency — Aligned teams share a clear vision of a given initiative and thus easily work towards fulfilling it
• Optimal quality — Well-aligned projects result in the best possible quality of the product or product’s increment in a limited time
• Improved morale — Team alignment can lead to a more positive work environment as team members have their voices heard. This way their input and concerns are taken into account as the project develops
• Better decision-making — By understanding the team’s perspective, you can better adjust the initiative’s requirements so that the team can develop the best possible output within the known boundaries
• Higher productivity — When alignment is achieved, the teams are more likely to meet their sprint goals and it’s way easier to estimate the complexity of tasks right
• Cultural impact — Alignment fosters a culture of collaboration and shared values and standards. It’s even more important on teams’ cooperation level, to make sure things are happening in a similar high quality across the whole company

How to build team alignment

Now, let’s look at some strategies and best practices to ensure your team is aligned and working effectively. The three most important categories are:

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Communication techniques

• Face-to-face conversations — The most efficient and effective method of conveying information. These can be done remotely, but there’s something magical in having everyone in the room that Teams (or another software) hasn’t managed to replicate yet
• Consistent communication channels — Establish a reliable set of communication channels like email, chat apps, and project management tools to ensure team members can easily find ways to communicate. Also, make sure that the email policies on updates from those channels are helpful, rather than just generating spam that everyone will ignore

Goal-setting techniques

• SMART goals — Provide SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals
• CLEAR goals — Make goals CLEAR (collaborative, limited, emotional, appreciable, refinable) to ensure they are well-understood and achievable
• Collaborative goals — Make sure your team has a voice in choosing the goals, so everyone can get behind them

Building your process

• Working “contracts” — Co-create working agreements that clarify how you work and who is responsible for what
• Agile scrum framework — Following the core agile scrum events, if done right, should organically improve team alignment
• Clear mission/vision — Make sure everyone understands the value you and the team are to deliver to your users and express it with every product task taken to the sprint
• Context — Speak a lot about the purpose driving the business and value it creates. Ensure those values are embraced regularly and are included in every product document and presentations you share
• Lead by example — Be authentic and show that you believe in what you ask your team to team. It’s one thing to have a vision and strategy, but it’s another thing to make them count and actually influence your actions
• Choose the right metrics — Agree on key performance indicators with your team, including what they mean, and how to correctly measure them. This way you all push the same agenda with transparent success criteria

Remember, building alignment is an ongoing process that requires continuous attention and effort. You should be able to easily sustain a collaborative, transparent, and high-performing agile scrum team by implementing these strategies and best practices.

Conducting a team alignment meeting

Organizing and conducting an effective team alignment meeting is essential for ensuring that everyone on the team is on the same page. To make the team alignment meetings effective, follow these steps:

1. Define clear objectives

Before the meeting, establish what you want to achieve. Not all meetings will follow the same structure. Once you can focus on goals, other times on strategy or make a follow-up to a recent retrospective where a major lack of alignment was discovered.

2. Plan the agenda

Make sure specific topics are timeboxed and the meeting is moderated. Just talking and talking about alignment won’t help to introduce it. You need to get the room to agree on something and quickly! Make sure to share the agenda and goals before it starts.

3. Select the right crowd

Jeff Bezos once said that in order for the meeting to be effective, you should be able to feed the participants with two pizzas. While for alignment purposes you might need more, make sure all the right people are invited. It’s not a complete, successful alignment if key team members are missing to save corporate funds on pizza!

4. Promote open discussion

Despite moderation, encourage open and honest discussions. People need to feel empowered to speak up and express their concerns. It might be that some levels of frustrations will have to be discharged before a true alignment can be achieved.

5. End the meeting with action points assigned

Your alignment (kick start) meetings won’t make any sense if they don’t conclude with a set of action items assigned to owners and deadlines. Make sure to document the action plan and use a system that’ll allow you to track progress.

6. Follow-up

You can either issue a progress review meeting or simply review it during the next team alignment meeting.

Challenges in achieving team alignment

Achieving team alignment can be challenging, but understanding the typical hurdles and implementing solutions can help the alignment quickly return on the right tracks. Here are some common challenges and proposed solutions:

• Lack of clarity and conflicting objectives — Unclear goals and priorities can lead to misalignment and a lot of frustration. This one can easily be addressed by involving the team during the goal setup and by documenting the goals and their definitions. A dedicated team alignment meeting won’t hurt as well!
• Poor communication — The rock band Depeche Mode claims that “words are meaningless and forgettable.” While this isn’t their default state, they can surely become this way if you don’t communicate effectively
• Limited trust — Clear goals and effective communication won’t help to achieve alignment if trust is missing in the team
• Inconsistent leadership — Unclear guidance from leaders can cause confusion and frustration. Try to make sure that your leadership is at least aware of the inconsistency they introduce

Example of successful team alignment

For me, the biggest alignment story I can tell is the story of my first team as a product owner. Back then I didn’t have much product experience. I came from a project management background and I really didn’t know how to unite people around me to create great products. That obviously was a downside when it came to actually working with the team who, on top of my lack of experience, also had bad dealings with their previous product manager.

I had to literally face doubt and opposition against any idea I would bring to the table. Nothing was good enough and nothing was worth doing. However, in time I started presenting my team with a very detailed account of what I wanted to do and why.

I spent multiple meetings showing them my longtime vision, my ideas, how to achieve them, and welcoming the team to accompany me and propose ideas at every step. I think the breakthrough came when I showed up to a meeting with them with a prioritized backlog that they hated. So rather than quarrel with them I challenged them to reprioritize the backlog with me.

We worked for an hour together selecting every task, its value, its complexity, and the risks associated. Surprisingly at the end of the session, we achieved the exact same prioritization that I had proposed the moment I walked into the room. From that day, everything that I brought to the team was received with a lot of goodwill and trust. However I didn’t end there and I kept on involving them at every possible step and treating them as partners rather than developers working for me.

Key takeaways

I started by saying that as a PM, you can’t do it alone. You can’t be successful without a supporting team that understands your motivations, goals, and trusts that you’re setting them on a path to build a great product.

Without team alignment, this level of loyalty will simply never happen. That’s why being on the same page is so important and why you should aim to transform your team of product code developers into a team of eager and proactive “junior product managers.”

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you soon in my next post!

Featured image source: IconScout

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