Categorizing work
Teams

4min
Reports in Echoes are organized around teams, making their configuration crucial to using the product.
Teams in Echoes form a tree hierarchy. That is, a team can have sub-teams and so on. Each team level is thus an interesting aggregation point for reported efforts. Members in your organization should be dispatched into teams. Members can be dispatched at any level of the organization. At any given time, a member is dispatched into one team at most. Otherwise, members can be left in the Undispatched special-team.
Example team hierarchy in Echoes
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To make the best use of Echoes, teams should reflect a structure that is of importance for you, and members should be dispatched accordingly. Also, companies evolve with time. Thus, work is required to keep Echoes team and members dispatching up to date.
When a member changes of team, we still keep track of the past membership so that the allocation of efforts as seen in the past is correct in your reports.
We provide two ways to configure your team tree and the memberships: a manual configuration﻿, and a CSV import﻿.
Frequently asked questions
Which mode should I use?
The answer will strongly depend on your adoption-level of Echoes and your typical company changes.
The vast majority of our users are satisfied with manual configuration﻿. Each manager can be granted write permissions on the teams definitions thanks to role-based access controls. The effort of maintaining an accurate representation of the organization is therefore distributed among managers, each being responsible for their scope.

The CSV import﻿ helps with large organizations but may require some dedicated person to update Echoes periodically.
Can I import teams from my SCM (e.g., GitHub)?
No. In our experience very few organizations have a team layout in their GitHub or GitLab organization which maps to reality. Furthermore, Echoes requires the concept of a join date and keeps track of how a given member of the organization changes teams over time, which SCM don't provide.
Can I import teams from my HRIS (e.g., Workday)?
No. This feature was implemented and later pulled as it didn't find much use with our user base. It is oftentimes the case that the HRIS models a reporting organization different from the operational organization. For example, many modern product-based organizations define the team as a multidisciplinary group combining engineering, product, design, and more, each reporting into a different management line. Only the operational organization is relevant in the context of Echoes.

If connecting Echoes to your HRIS is a blocker to your adoption, please reach out to [email protected] and we will be happy to discuss.
Can a member participate in more than one team?
No, a member can only participate in one team at a time. We generally recommend assigning members to their "primary" team, knowing that it's possible to capture through dimensions and initiatives that they contribute to broader goals. Alternatively, it's possible to add members to non-leaf nodes of the organization tree, therefore effectively having their participation span across multiple teams.
What happens to past data when a member changes team?
Past contributions are not impacted by a change of team, only future contributions do. It is however possible to edit a member's join date within a team, which may reattribute some of their past contributions to the appropriate team.
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Updated 15 Jan 2024
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Initiatives
Manual configuration