A great project results from a successful combination of many constituents, like a perfect concept, cutting-edge tech stack, and a skilled IT staff with enough expertise for your workflow completion and maximum profit.
A cross-functional team gathering will be a great decision for your software development project. This post will explain the cross-functional team notion, advantages, challenges, and other necessities.
What is The Essence of Cross-Functional Staff?
Cross-functional IT staff notion implies a group of various departments’ professionals, such as Android/iOS developers, UI/UX designers, QA engineers, and so on, concentrated on one project development (e.g., building a web app/website). Constant communication is a distinctive feature of such a cooperation type, allowing the experts to release the developed products as soon as possible. Moreover, cooperation with professionals from various departments helps you solve a set of possible project issues before it’s too late to deal with it.
A cross-functional team may work quicker than a traditional functional team. A functional team method increases the time and money you spend on your staff and their meetings while also boosting the time spent on project development. This way, one department can perform their part of work while the others wait for its finish. However, this disadvantage can be eliminated by collaboration with the cross-functional teams.
Functional vs. cross-functional teams
Functional teams’ departments are responsible each for their duties. They work sequentially, transferring a finished part of a project from one to another department. Thus, one department may wait while another finishes their piece of work.
Benefits of Cross-Functional Teams
More than 30% of CEOs proved that a cross-functional team is the most common choice for their companies. So let’s find out what benefits they obtain from it.
Cost reduction. The cross-functional staff members simultaneously answer all the emergent queries from clients. That cuts costs, saves the company’s time, and speeds up the development flow.
Enhanced Communication. Proper communication can assist in increasing your business efficiency. So does the cross-functional team actively communicate with each other and on different collaboration levels.
Enough competency for complex projects. Cross-functional staff is capable of quickly solving the arising issues due to their excellence in communication. Such an aspect allows to boost the project and finish it quicker.
Superb concepts. The members of a cross-functional team constantly share their experiences with each other, getting new knowledge and finding out something new. Here great concepts bore.
Cross-Functional Team Challenges
Cross-functional staffs also have their own issues you need to know about to solve them as quickly as possible. One of such issues is the necessity to comply with specific development steps listed below.
The launching step is required to gather a team and define all the purposes. Concentrate on respondents’ abilities and expertise to get the most out of this process to prevent employing the incorrect personnel.
The storming step is a challengeous one. During it, you should perform a set of team-building activities to unite your collected staff and explain their common goals. Furthermore, care about trainings for conflict resolutions.
The norming step is made while the project flow is started. All the goals and objectives are already identified, so you should manage your staff work, particularly controlling non-performers.
How to manage your cross-functional team? There are some tips you should consider:
- Use team management tools (e.g., Slack, Trello, Fleep, Basecamp, etc.)
- Conduct team-building meetings but don’t overuse them
- Always offer valuable feedback to your personnel
The performing step means your project is nearly finished. Check out the number of tasks and their timing for making correct estimates with your cross-functional team.
Development steps you should pass through for dealing with your cross-functional team
Wrapping Up
Cross-functional teams can be amazingly beneficial in case you know how to wisely handle them. It may help you save time and funds while developing the project, leading to higher performance. What’s more, they allow you to solve possible challenges earlier until it becomes a severe problem.
We only told the management basics, but if you want to know more, the skilled software development company can provide an in-depth consultation for you and offer the appropriate candidates for gathering a powerful cross-functional team.