Stage 2

Tribe as a foundation

“Are we heading in the right direction?”

The tribe develops its own consistent cadence of work and a shared language of collaboration between teams. It stops being a patchwork of teams, each doing things its own way. It starts to see and use the benefits of a predictable structure and regularity (a cadence of planning and quarterly business reviews).

Solves

The lack of consistency and coordination between teams in the tribe - the tribe stops being a collection of teams each doing things their own way. A shared language, cadence and structure emerge that make it possible to plan, review results and change how things work inside the tribe.

How to recognise this stage

A regular quarterly business review (QBR) exists and sets the cadence of the tribe's work
The tribe's goals (e.g. OKRs, roadmap goals, strategic goals broken down into priorities) are visible and better understood - people come back to them, and the QBR discusses them
But: the planning horizon is a deadline by which the work has to “get done”. It isn't yet used as a frame for deliberately organising the work. Hence many initiatives (e.g. epics) open at once, with none of them prioritised
Unplanned work lands every sprint as a surprise, not as part of the system
The tribe lead knows what they want to achieve, but not when it will be done
Teams work more and more independently - but still each for themselves, without visibility or awareness of their impact on the whole
Flow metrics such as cycle time aren't measured - the work “just rolls on”. How it gets done depends heavily on how close the deadline is and on the charisma of the leaders and teams.
Basic engineering practices (CI/CD, automated testing) are adopted, but applied unevenly across teams
Improvement already has its own cadence (e.g. retrospectives), but the issues raised often go beyond the mandate of those who raise them - they keep coming back without being resolved

What usually hurts

A significant part of the planned work changes during the planning cycle without any decision-making mechanism (in the tribes we've observed this was at times in the region of 30-50%). It's hard to find a clear answer to why particular initiatives drag on. External dependencies and blockers (e.g. from other tribes or from departments such as marketing, compliance, sales or operations) catch the teams by surprise while the work is under way. The tribe delivers - but there's no understanding of why some topics drag on.

What usually happens next

The question “when will it be done?” comes up more and more often, and there are no simple answers. Leaders look for data. Stage 3 begins.

Where you see it

Organisations from a year or so to a few years after rolling out the tribe model more widely, with an established cadence of planning beyond the sprint, but without mechanisms for managing flow.

Recognise this stage in your tribe? Let's talk about what usually blocks the move to stage 3 and where to start in your case.

Let's talk about stage 2

Transition 2 → 3

How to move to stage 3

Signal that it's time to start

The question “when will it be done?” comes up more and more often and nobody can answer it sensibly - the tribe lead works on gut feeling, not data. A significant part of the planned work changes during the cycle without any decision-making mechanism, and unplanned work lands as a surprise rather than as something the tribe is prepared for. Business leaders start openly demanding dates and data, not promises.

Who leads

The tribe lead, but now with the explicit involvement of the business leaders - this is the first transition in which the business side becomes an active participant, not just a recipient.

When you need someone from outside the tribe

When SLAs with external departments (compliance, marketing, other teams) are beyond the tribe lead's negotiating power - then a mandate is needed from their managers or from the transformation programme.

First tangible result

The tribe lead's first forecast (“it'll be done around X”) that comes true within a reasonable margin of error.

Warning sign

The metrics exist and are nicely visualised, but nobody has made a single decision based on them for months - that's a dashboard, not flow management.

We agree the specific steps in a conversation, because they depend on your context.