Appendix A. Team Strategy
| People | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ↓ | = | ↑ | ||
| Scope | ↓ | Deprecation | Reorganization | Consolidation |
| = | Efficiencies | Stability | Growth | |
| ↑ | Layoffs | Expansion | High growth! | |
↓ People && ↓ Scope: Deprecation
Deprecation happens when something has reached end of life. This can be unmitigated bad news (such as the company is failing) but not necessarily. End of life might just mean a changed scope, which can sometimes be a positive. For example, it’s not bad news in the case where the team just owned too many things and needs to be broken up for clarity and improved effectiveness.
For instance, say a team is managing a legacy service and the plan is to migrate to a new one; as such, the scope of what the team owns and of the team itself will shrink over time. Maybe it will go to zero eventually, or maybe one team was supporting disparate things and is being right-sized.
What to Consider
You’ll need to think about how to situate, manage, and communicate the change within the broader context of the organization. What practical things—like knowledge transfer and SLAs—will need to take place? How do you make sure there’s clarity on who owns what and that the people who remain are set up for success?
What to Worry About
If it is objectively bad news, clearly you will need to worry about that. However, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether or not this is objectively bad news: when teams get smaller, it often feels like bad news.
People ...
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