Some problems belong to no team. Each department does its part well, and the work still fails at the point where one hands it to the other. Because the failure sits between them, each side sees it as the other’s. This Practice finds the exact handoff where the work gets lost and fixes it with something both teams agree to use.

A tool that supports it

Interface Governance is a way of acting, and more than one tool can support it. A visual one is the “Swimlane Diagram,” which Geary Rummler and Alan Brache named in their book Improving Performance.

Picture a swimming pool seen from above. Each department gets a lane. You write the steps of the process in the lane of the team that does them, in order, and draw an arrow from each step to the next. Most arrows stay inside a lane. Some cross from one lane to another, and each crossing is a handoff.

For this Practice, the crossings are where you look. At each one you ask what is passed and how early it arrives. A crossing with no clear answer is usually the place where the problem lives.

When to use it

Use it when the same failure keeps happening and two teams each explain it by pointing at the other. The signal is a sentence like “we never got that from them.”

It works when both teams are willing to look at the process together. Drawing the diagram alone and presenting it as proof tends to restart the argument.

How to use it

  1. Write the failure as a fact, with how often it happens.
  2. Draw one lane for each team and write the steps in order, with the people who do them.
  3. Mark every arrow that crosses between lanes.
  4. At each crossing, ask both teams: “What exactly gets passed here? How many days before it’s needed?”
  5. Fix the weak crossing with one shared thing, like a form or a date, and get both leads to adopt it. Agreeing on a fix that neither team owns alone is the hard part.

Example

At a 90-person company, four of the last ten new hires started without a laptop. HR says IT is slow. IT says nobody tells them.

The HR lead and the IT lead draw the lanes together. In the HR lane, the offer is signed and the start date is set. In the IT lane, the laptop is ordered, which takes ten working days, and the accounts are created. One arrow crosses between them: HR emails IT about the new hire. They check the last ten emails. On average, they were sent four days before the start date.

The usual way “IT needs to prioritize new hires.”
The Practice From the HR lead: “The gap is at the moment we tell you. You need ten working days and we give you four. What if we fill out one new-hire form on the day the offer is signed, with the start date and the equipment, and you confirm within two days?”

Both leads adopt the form. The next six hires all have a laptop on their first day.

Phrases you can use

  • “Can we draw this together, step by step?”
  • “At this point, what exactly do you get from us?”
  • “How early do you need it to do your part well?”
  • “I think the problem is at the handoff, more than on either side.”
  • “What’s one thing we could both use here from now on?”
  • For a leader, when someone does it: “You fixed that with the other team in the room. What did each side agree to change?”

How to know it worked

Both leads use the same form or date, and the failure rate drops in the weeks that follow. The two teams stop explaining the problem by naming each other. With time, people from either side suggest drawing the lanes when a new problem shows up between them.

In a Skill Deck Track on Problem Solving, a person can choose this Practice, and the meetings they already have show when they use it.

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