Alignment of big teams is a huge challenge. Especially nowadays, when we need to develop complex solutions and many different experts have to be involved, it is essential to have a clear alignment, but also to give experts enough autonomy to do their work.

Let me share my top three tools for aligning big teams:

1. Clear Mission

One of the most important things is to have a clear mission. Everyone involved has to know what the end product is supposed to be used for, who the customers and users are and what the use cases look like.

I know this might sound very obvious, but most of the time people don’t really know what they are working on, they don’t know the bigger picture. When aligning teams, it is essential that everyone onboard understands what we want to achieve and what it needs to get there.

2. PI Planning

The PI Planning is an element of SAFe, a framework for scaling agility.  On this face-to-face two-day event, all teams come together to plan the next three months. The plans are made by the individual teams in so called breakout session

s, while the alignment is created by dedicated elements like events explaining business contexts and product vision. The PI Planning is a very strong element to create alignment, as teams plan a short amount of time together, they discuss dependencies, risks and much more and then try to stick to the plan while implementing it.

3. Scrum

High complexity is a big topic when it comes to many teams working together. Scrum gives us the opportunity to handle complexity in a very effective way, as we develop the product

incrementally. The structure of Scrum creates a cadence and regularity, which is very forceful when different teams have to work together.