"Tiger Teams" are relatively common in large technical organizations (usually outside of computing). I have seen them at a linear accelerator facility and also

"Tiger Teams" are relatively common in large technical organizations (usually outside of computing). I have seen them at a linear accelerator facility and also in large factories. I think the first time the name was used was in the NASA space program (and looking at the wikipedia link someone provided that appears to be correct). Basically, they are teams that are put together to deal with ongoing critical cross-cutting problems in the organization. They are, by nature, cross-functional. Large orgs tend to put talent into silos. Silo'd talent can make the org vulnerable to weird problems where no one feels enough agency to act using the excuse-- "it's not my job". A Tiger Team is intended to work across silos.