What are best practices in having a continuous improvement (aka process management & improvement) team collaborate with product/product engineering teams, to avoid duplicate & competing work?

At LH we have our CI manager reporting thru the PMO. As all projects flow thru the PMO it is the central coordination point. It is where we find the disconnections and then close those Gaps. I would have to better understand the Co. Structure and industry to better be able to help. In a general sense, having some regular cadence with the leaders of those respective groups is how I have seen most handle this. Also depending on what systems they have in place, some automation triggers can be used to help.

This can become a complex issue if your senior management is not directly involved in defining a clear strategy and boundaries for each team. An effective solution to create synergy between CI and product engineering involves concentrating information from both areas in the PMO, which must coordinate resources and control metrics associated with both areas. The head of the PMO must establish open communication with leaders in both areas and with senior management, focusing on avoiding duplication of work and lack of alignment with the strategy.

Our unit is separate from IT and is responsible for the program/project management and for IT governance.
IT is responsible for the technical delivery for programs/project technical delivery like development of interfaces with existing systems, providing infrastructure (e.g., servers, network connectivity, etc.).
Internally, within our unit, we have Continuous Improvements (CIs) based on learnings from closed and in-flight programs/projects. We have regularly touchpoints with our IT counterparts and with our IT governance committee (composed of key senior management folks from the business, IT and procurement) where we share some of the CIs. During the regular checkpoints with our IT counterparts, we identify the relevant policies, processes and templates affected and farm out the improvement to the unit that owns or is responsible for maintaining those policies, processes and templates.
Hope this helps! 

To ensure effective collaboration between CI and Product Engineering teams, and to avoid duplicating or competing work, i think that the we need to consider some best practices :      

#1. Establish Clear Roles and Responsibilities with 

  1.1 Define distinct focus areas for each team:
    - CI Team: Process improvement and operational efficiency.
    - Product Engineering Team: Product development and feature enhancement.
  1.2 Avoid overlaps by assigning ownership:

#2. Objectives alignement 
  2.1 Establish and share defined Goals: (Align team efforts with company objectives, and make  sure that both teams understand how their work contributes to mutual success.)
  2.2 Define success Metrics: ( Establish shared KPIs )

#3. Maintain Open and Regular Communication
 - Schedule regular alignment meetings to review progress and challenges.
 - Create feedback loops for updates  and feasibility discussions.

#4. Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration
 - Embed CI Representatives in Product Engineering planning sessions.
 - Facilitate knowledge-sharing sessions to build mutual understanding.
 - brainstorming session regarding solutions.

#5. Avoid Redundancy 
 - Develop an updated roadmaps for both teams.
 - Identify overlapping areas and the process to address it through shared visibility.

#6. Governance structure 
 - Leadership Alignment (roles and the importance of collaboration)
 - Conflict Resolution (Set up protocols to resolve disagreements)

"Collaboration allows us to capture each other's strengths and achieve what none of us could achieve alone." – Unknown

Use a collaborative tool to input and keep visibility of pipeline of projects.