The Anchor Playbook

The Bridge Builder

Pivotal/Tanzu Labs

CONNECTS TEAMS WITHIN A PRODUCT PROGRAM OR PORTFOLIO

Many teams, in order to be empowered, must rely upon the work of others outside their context. The Bridge Builder makes an extra effort to coordinate and align with other teams or strategic relationships in order to successfully deliver. Often, these relationships are crucial for the team to achieve their outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Leverage the relationships of others to influence stakeholders
• Pay attention to problems shared across teams in programs of work
• Demonstrate how to effectively work with other practices toward outcomes
• Know when to effectively engage with outside teams

Considerations

• Bring stakeholders into more of the technical conversations to inform them of decisions being made
• Carry context and collaborate across teams in a portfolio of multiple teams and projects
• While this anchortype is similar to the Shield, it emphasizes collaboration with other teams rather than firefighting and protecting the team

Challenges

• Different projects, internal organizations, and companies might have different expectations for anchors, so coordinating with other anchors and teams can be challenging for anchors who have become very accustom to their own project’s dynamics
• Bridge Builders can spend so much time building bridges that they become detached from pairing and their own team’s codebase