As I look back over my years of attending project meetings, I remember that on many occasions there was someone attending our meetings who was not part of our team, but was there as a representative of some other team we had to work with.

More specifically, in our printer firmware team meetings we had to discuss project issues and status with regards to the printer hardware. Sometimes, a representative from the hardware team would be present to give us a status report regarding schedule, defects, and issues, and to field our questions about the hardware. Some issues were as simple as getting the name of a hardware engineer to talk to in detail about a topic. Other issues required the hardware representative to investigate further and report to our team at the next meeting. Sometimes, a representative from our team would attend the hardware team meetings to follow up on those issues.

These representatives fulfilled a very important role in the collaborative efforts of the two teams. They were often called “representatives” or “liaisons.” But as I have thought about the importance of their job, I have decided that a more lofty title was appropriate, the title of “ambassador.”

But it’s just a name, right? True. But the term “ambassador” more clearly connotes one who carries some level of representative authority and who fosters goodwill between the two teams. It is the fostering of goodwill that, to me, is a key ingredient to the smooth collaboration of these two teams.

Have you ever been in a meeting where someone says, “What were they thinking over there??!! Are they crazy??!!!” Those questions come about because of the gap between the two teams. An ambassador, simply by being there, is in a position to answer, “This is what they were thinking…” or “Good question – I’ll go find out.”

• Some of the tasks of a team ambassador are:
• Attend joint system-level meetings of both teams.
• Attend meetings of either team, tracking cross-team issues and status.
• Be a resource to find answers and/or people from the other team.
• Invite experts from the other team to meetings when needed.
• Make sure appropriate hardware documents are reviewed by appropriate firmware engineers.
• Monitor integration efforts and identify resources to help solve problems.

The ambassador should be someone respected by both teams and should possess both leadership abilities and good engineering skills. Being an ambassador is generally not a full-time job, but rather an “as needed” duty of a designated engineer. Depending on the structure of the organization, there may need to be both a hardware ambassador and a firmware ambassador.

• Best Practice: Designate a member of the hardware team as ambassador to the firmware team.
• Best Practice: Designate a member of the firmware team as ambassador to the hardware team.

Until the next ambassadorial newsletter…