Managing Cross‑Department and Supplier Projects in Traditional Enterprises: Causes, Diagnosis, and Short‑ and Long‑Term Solutions

Two days ago, teacher Wang Lijie (@WudiGe) posted a question in the IDCF FDCC certified trainee group:

A traditional enterprise has many hierarchical layers and departments, making project management heavy and process‑driven. Now more than 70% of projects involve cross‑project, cross‑department, and supplier collaboration, resulting in low R&D efficiency. How should such a situation be managed and coordinated in the short term and long term?

Group members discussed the issue for over an hour, exchanging more than 200 WeChat messages. The following key points were organized and shared.

Discussion Focus One: Possible Causes of the Problem

1. Departmental walls causing inconsistent positions and obstacles

Increasing cross‑functional projects and deep organizational layers likely lead to departmental walls, generating too many conflicting voices and unsynchronized progress, which hinder project advancement.

2. Management, execution, and cultural issues preventing good processes from being adopted

Problems may stem from leadership, team execution, and collaboration. Even with solid processes, skill bottlenecks, lack of supervision, incentives, or penalties can cause a vicious cycle where good processes are not executed.

3. Upper‑management style influencing outcomes

The boss’s vision, corporate culture, work atmosphere, and organizational design affect communication efficiency and authority. Poor transparency, inspection, and adjustment at the project level also contribute to the issue.

4. Inherent characteristics of long‑cycle projects

Long‑cycle projects depend heavily on suppliers or customers, requiring extensive coordination. They involve planning, goals, priorities, and phases, making it difficult to escape traditional project‑management shadows. Often, internal platform development uses agile, while B‑side delivery remains waterfall, resulting in a hybrid that fits neither.

Discussion Focus Two: How to Diagnose Specific Problems and Find Their Roots

1. Regular communication and process improvement to uncover issues

Organize regular cross‑department meetings, use visual boards to prioritize projects, make progress visible, and expose conflicts. Upper‑level priority guidance helps resolve resource conflicts and reveals hidden problems for targeted solutions.

2. Project visualization combined with interviews to locate problems

Conduct interviews to identify “who” and “what” problems exist, then map value streams or similar tools to illustrate project flow across roles and departments. Compare the visual map with interview findings to pinpoint real obstacles.

Discussion Focus Three: Short‑Term and Long‑Term Effective Solutions

1. In function‑oriented or resource‑centered organizations, fundamental change is difficult. For a 70% cross‑project ratio, create a typical case study, re‑engineer the business, and define the shortest delivery path before adjusting the structure.

2. Short‑term: pilot a single project with a project‑based management approach. Long‑term: split the organization into business‑oriented units or “tribes” similar to Spotify.

3. Classify and prioritize projects, distinguishing key from non‑key items and identifying management focal points.

Short‑term: focus on key projects, clarify responsibilities, make issues clear, ensure transparent progress.

Long‑term: establish processes, add QA, and implement phased management tracking.

4. Product development can adopt intermittent agile methods, prioritize sprints, and switch between overlapping sprints for multiple projects.

5. Long‑term, reorganize by business lines, decouple teams (similar to Spotify’s tribes), and use multi‑level kanban to align project status across layers.

6. Short‑term, maintain existing projects, select a low‑risk, high‑value project as a pilot, form a virtual organization, align performance incentives, and gradually introduce agile practices.

Discussion Focus Four: Addressing Long‑Cycle Project Characteristics

Design a complete MVP business loop and iterate, breaking long‑cycle projects into smaller phases. Allocate resources from ineffective short‑term projects to those that can deliver quickly. Ensure demand departments communicate and align on overall goals rather than operating in silos.

Discussion Focus Five: Dealing with External Supplier‑Related Issues

1. Visualize to identify waiting reasons

Development often waits on supplier integration, causing resource blockage. Making waiting tasks visible (e.g., marking them as blockers) allows teams to continue with other work and reduces waste.

2. Establish own processes and standards

When collaborating with suppliers, maintain internal processes, standards, and architecture control. Design BA/IA, conduct joint reviews, and schedule supplier interfaces individually. If a supplier lags, proceed with alternative tasks or manual workarounds, prioritizing the department most impacted.

Discussion Focus Six: Gaining Upper‑Management Support for Reform

Bottom‑up reform stalls without senior backing; upper management needs a clear plan and executable actions from middle and lower levels.

Leaders must recognize the problem: traditional companies rely on long‑cycle waterfall models, treating agile as a façade.

Often, staff report issues but lack persuasive evidence or concrete alternative solutions, leaving executives unable to decide.

Transparency and visualization of the development process (e.g., ISO, CMMI, IPD documentation) provide the evidence needed to convince senior leaders to support change.

The above content comes from the FDCC certified trainee group discussion, compiled by IDCF editors for reference only. Feel free to leave your comments.