Team vs. Department

A common issue when an organisation first starts moving towards ‘automonous teams’ is the complexity around working with other functional departments as the team doesn’t have all the skill set it needs.

The value of teams is that everyone is aligned with a common purpose. What this means in reality is that no one is being pulled in a different direction as they are focused on the end result. In partiality this means that no team member will have meetings, time or tasks that are unrelated to the goal of the team and this is the most important distringustion between teams and departments.

A department is functional, the input that goes into it is from many different areas of the business and typically a first come first serve basis unless hippos are involved. With a team, there is no distraction. There is a goal and the team was formed to solve the problem(s).

Teams get scalable results. Departments get recognized individuals.