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I’m going to be managing a very large project across many teams; I anticipate close to 20. For smaller projects, I typically schedule weekly (or some regular cadence) meetings where a representative from each team reports status and we track progress, identify opens and follow-ups. But for such a large number of teams, this seems inefficient.

Another facet is the project involves my team shutting down a feature that other teams depend on. So each team may respond to the shutdown differently. Thus, while I want to ensure our partner teams land their committed dates for removing their dependency on us, how they do it is up to them. The solution for transition may not be common across teams.

In a situation like this, what’s the most efficient way to manage such a large project? Is a common dashboard with smaller group meetings of 4-5 reps the right middle ground?

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I would propose - in addition to other methods - that you send around a weekly status report.

It should have as paragraph headings the Team Name and then a few bullet points of what they recently achieved and what they plan on doing.

The introductory section can highlight issues that will affect more than one team. Your example of shutting down functions that other items may depend on would be an example.

  • Function X will be shut down by the Y team on D date. Please use the new W function that team T has created.
    • Documentation can be found on the internal Wiki at this address.

Items like this can remain in the status report for multiple weeks beforehand, and a few weeks after, since not everybody will read and/memorize every update.

To get the information for the update, either ask the Team leaders to send you the information, or else - my preferred method - is by walking around interviewing team members to see what they are up to.

(The fun part is to start bottom-up and see how the workers and their superiors do not always seem to be in sync.)

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