Module 5 · Lesson 5.1
What the canvas records
How the Structured Collaboration Canvas™ makes the dependencies between teams explicit.
Key idea
Every team is at once a provider and a customer. The canvas records what each team needs and provides, so both sides of a handoff work from the same page.
Canvas demo video coming soon
A Harbourline team canvas, column by column. Until it is recorded, open the worked example and keep it beside this lesson.
Every team is a provider and a customer
Most friction between teams isn’t disagreement. It is two teams silently assuming different things about the same handoff. The Structured Collaboration Canvas™ exists to make those dependencies explicit, so both sides work from the same page instead of their own version of it.
The canvas starts from a simple observation: every team is at once a provider and a customer. One team’s Deliverables are another team’s Inputs. So each team answers five questions:
Try it
Five questions, five columns
Choose a column to see the question it answers and what the Pune Service Desk records there.
| The question | Who are our customers? |
|---|---|
| What it records | The teams and people who receive the team’s Deliverables. |
| Pune Service Desk | Northlight Financial’s users. |
One team’s Deliverables are another team’s Inputs. That is how a set of canvases checks each interface from both sides.
What the canvas holds
Beside the five columns, each team’s canvas also records:
- The parking lot: issues and ideas that have surfaced but don’t yet have an owner or an answer, including any escalated to the Enterprise Execution Forum.
- Values and behaviours: how the team has agreed to work with the teams on either side of it.
- OKRs: the team’s objectives and key results, which the agreements on the canvas exist to support.
Where an Input or Deliverable matters enough to cause returns or argument, it is specified by an operational definition, agreed by both teams and linked to both sides of the handoff.
Because every team names the others, a set of canvases can check each interface from both sides. The canvas tool’s Interfaces view shows where one team lists something it needs that the supplying team doesn’t list as something it provides, and where an Input or Deliverable has no agreed operational definition behind it.
The input that does the most work
The Inputs column carries more weight than it looks as though it should, because a vague input is the most common way two teams end up talking past each other.
Harbourline · Managed Services and Finance
At Harbourline, Declan Moore, Director of Managed Services, asks Finance for “a business forecast” so he can plan staffing at the Pune Service Desk. Finance delivers a revenue forecast. It is accurate, on time and useless for staffing. Finance believes the request is closed.
Try it
“A business forecast”, vague and specified
Switch between the two versions of Declan Moore’s input.
| What Declan asks Finance for | “A business forecast”, to plan staffing at the Pune Service Desk. |
|---|---|
| What Finance delivers | A revenue forecast: accurate, on time and useless for staffing. |
| Who thinks the request is closed | Finance. Declan disagrees. |
With the input specified on Declan’s canvas, the request doesn’t just say “business forecast”. It says a forecast that includes ticket volumes by client, expected new services going live, and the hours of support each will need. Finance knows what “done” means before it starts, not after the forecast is rejected.
Pause and think · your notes
Think of the Input your team depends on most that often falls short.
How Alex would answer
The vague input is the most common way two teams talk past each other. Specifying it tells the supplier what “done” means before they start, not after the work is rejected.
The canvas is not the goal
A completed canvas is not the point. Its value lies in the conversation needed to create it, and in managing the agreements it contains afterwards.
A team gets more from examining the inputs that actually stop it doing its work right first time than from filling in every field for its own sake. Start with the interfaces that are important and recurring, and leave the rest until they matter.
Where the canvas sits
The canvas is one of a small set of connected artefacts. Above it, the Business Execution Canvas® sets out what the organisation is aiming for, and the team’s OKRs say what the team will achieve towards it. The Structured Collaboration Canvas™ says how the team works with everyone its goals depend on. And an issue the team can’t resolve on its own, logged in its parking lot, can be escalated to the Enterprise Execution Forum for a decision. The Advanced level covers those connections in depth.
What to take away
- Every team is a provider and a customer; one team’s Deliverables are another’s Inputs.
- Specify the Inputs that matter, so the supplier knows what “done” means before it starts.
- The value is in the conversation and in managing the agreements, not in a completed form.
Your progress
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