A project doesn’t just happen on its own, it takes a team to get it done. But what kind of team setup works best?
Specialized teams could work; one person sets up servers, the other programs, another designs, someone tests it and so on. The downside to that setup is it creates bottlenecks. If the server tech gets sick with the flu and takes a week off, everyone else is stuck waiting on his task to be completed before they can move ahead.
A T-shaped team helps address that shortcoming by having some who can perform the task and get some of the work out but at a much slower rate, kind of like an understudy. A T-shaped team is not specialized, where a member of the specialized team would have a skill in one task and do it well, a T-shaped team member would have some other skill that helps the team. If you have to pick one, the T-shaped team is your best bet.
In my opinion, the best team setup is a cross-functional team. The ability to deliver features no one will use is a waste of time, money, and energy. A cross-functional team delivers value by working together, sharing their knowledge, taking risks, and experimenting. A legal secretary and a logistics administrator helped our team bring maximum value to an OCR project we did recently. While the technical team worked on features, the non-technical team members optimized and tested.
They created a value map of each feature and identified and eliminated waste. They discovered that our copiers needed to be upgraded because our current setup couldn't handle the amount of paper processed in a day. They also optimized the file room to maximize the scanning throughput, educated users outside the team, and promoted the project across the organization. When we finished the project, the entire firm was actively using the program and we had ideas for future improvements and upgrades.
A cross-functional team is not just a group of people that have a bunch of skills but a group that is focused on driving project value. The Pareto principle (80/20 rule) states that you spend 20 percent of your time working on things that matter and 80 percent wasting time. The team worked on flipping those numbers around using lean and kanban to eliminate waste and visualize work in progress. Using Agile to work with our PO to deliver something in a way the company would be ready to use it rather than just having the feature available.
I suggested the T-shaped team earlier because it takes time to become a cross-functional team. It's something you strive for and it takes a dedicated effort. The team takes time develop as people get comfortable with the methods and speaking their minds. They need to learn what each member brings to the table and how each person works. It’s not something that could be sped up, it's a trial and error process involving a couple of sprints and coaching.
If you're looking to develop your own cross-functional team, I would recommend reading the Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results by Mike Rother. It’s a great read and helps explain the mindset for continuous improvement and will help in creating the highly sought after cross-functional team.
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