Temporary Authority Contracts: Give Squads Permission — and a Sunset

Cross-functional squads and fast-response teams are how businesses move quickly — until their temporary privileges calcify into permanent exceptions that shift risk, cost, and responsibility. This episode argues for treating each short-lived team as a product with a one-page Temporary Authority Contract: explicit scope, delegated decision rights, limits, success signals, monitoring, sunset date, and a repatriation plan. Mirko walks both sides—why business wants autonomy to ship outcomes and why IT fears uncontrolled drift and hidden coupling—and shows how a simple, timeboxed contract preserves speed while protecting long‑term operability. Listeners get a compact contract template, three low-friction rituals to try this week (pre-launch contract read, mid-mission checkpoint, and automated sunset alarm), and a 7-day pilot to test whether temporary authority reduces blockers without creating governance debt. CTA: pilot one Temporary Authority Contract this sprint, collect one learning, and—if it helps—leave a review and follow Mirko on LinkedIn.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-it-it-business--6867401/support.To continue the conversation, follow Mirko Peters on LinkedIn, where more insights and real-world examples are shared from both business and IT perspectives.