Today’s teams need Roles, not Functions

But how do you properly set up a cross-functional team? One of the key things is to change the mindset of the team members from thinking about functions towards working based on roles.

(This is the thirteenth blog in the series “How to train cross-functional teams”, for links to previous blogs please go to the end of this blog)

The traditional way of organizing work: Functions

In traditional organizations people have a function and, in a V-model approach every function has a very clear stage where activities are done. With a function come specific responsibilities. And a person with a specific function only performs tasks that are within the responsibilities of that function. In some traditional organizations they group people in multi-disciplinary teams, but this still means a team where every team member has a specific function and stays on their own “island”.

A core problem of having a defined and distinct function is that people tend to focus on “what am I NOT responsible for”. They only take responsibility for their own tasks, the rest is not their problem.

The change cross-functional teams bring

To solve problems in communication and collaboration, todays high-performance IT delivery is organized in cross-functional teams. A main characteristic of such team is that all team members together take responsibility for completing all tasks necessary to deliver business value.

The shift for individual people in a cross-functional team is that they think “how can we fix this together”. And the key quality of people to really work together is to regularly switch roles and pick up a wider variety of tasks than they would in a traditional organization. The team members take responsibility for the entire team delivery, instead of just focusing on tasks which in their mind lie within their own “function”.

The value of working based on roles

When we talk about a role, we mean that a person can adopt this role in the team whenever this is necessary. So, a person can have multiple roles sequentially or even in parallel. In a cross-functional team every team member is allowed to pick up any task. Of course, a team member should realize first whether they are capable of doing that task. Some tasks they can do individually, other tasks they can do in pairs (that’s why the term “teamwork” was invented!).

Together the team members must have all knowledge and skills to perform all tasks of the team. And a team should take care that for all necessary knowledge and skills there are at least two people competent enough, so that if one person is not available the team can still continue to complete their tasks.

And keep in mind: not all specialized skills necessarily need to be available in the team, a team can work together with specialists from support teams for such specialized tasks.

The key skill is Curiosity

It is an illusion to think that people exist that can do any possible task in a high-performance cross-functional team. But for a team to work effectively and efficiently, it is key that every member of the team is interested in any task. By showing interest team members can help their fellow team members, just by asking questions they may already help solving problems.

And by being curious in what other team members do, they learn new knowledge and skills and thus become even more valuable as a member of their cross-functional team.

People that don’t limit themselves to a function but are open to adopt multiple roles are the key to a successful IT delivery team that truly works in a cross-functional way.

What, in your opinion, is the main benefit of applying roles instead of functions? Please, get in touch with us and let us know!

This blog has been co-authored by Rik Marselis, Principal Quality Consultant at Sogeti in the Netherlands.

This is the thirteenth blog in the series How to train cross-functional teams, the second blog is here How to be a good cross-functional team member, the third blog Does every team member need coding skills, the fourth Five different ways to train a cross-functional team member, the fifth Challenges of agile at scale , the sixth Do cross-functional team members need business knowledge?, the seventh What’s the difference between training on-line and on-site?, the eight Solutions to the testing challenges when working agile at scale, the ninth Solutions to the testing challenges when working agile at scale - part 2, the tenth Three tips when working with teams with people from different backgrounds , the eleventh Social sustainability, the twelfth Three tips when working agile at scale