How To Manage Your Cross-Functional Team With Agile

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Published in Apps on 01/12/2023, last updated 31/05/2024.

The term “Agile” tends to be tossed around in business circles these days, but it has a very specific meaning when it comes to project management. Most people aren’t familiar with what Agile is or why it’s an important workflow, especially when it comes to managing a cross-functional team.

What is a cross-functional team?

A cross-functional team (or CFT) is a team that includes specialists from all different areas of a company coming together to work on one particular project.

For example, if your company needs to launch a new responsive website, it may appoint a cross-functional team to accomplish the goal. The team will include specialists from different departments, like designers, a front and back-end developer, a copywriter, an account manager, a marketing specialist, and a manager to oversee the whole project. Managing a team of specialists from different departments is not always easy. For example, designers and developers don’t always speak the same language. Processes such as ITSM are designed to mitigate those issues, but sometimes more effort is needed, especially when you need to collaborate between large teams.

When people are appointed to implement and manage a cross-functional team, they often struggle to do so effectively. That’s where Agile methodology comes in. This strategy ensures that your team members understand their priorities, and are on the same page regarding weekly and daily deliverables.

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Improving cross-functional team management with Agile

The biggest hurdle to effectively using Agile is understanding how to apply it to a CFT. The first step is to understand the basic tenets of Agile:

• There is a clear owner for both the product (deliverable) and the process (sprint/iteration).
• Time boxes define the amount of work to be completed within a specific period of time (sprint/iteration).
• Work is broken down into specific tasks that can be accomplished within a single sprint.
• Teams are responsible for the completion and delivery of promised work by the end of the sprint.

Now that you have the gist of Agile, let’s take a look at how it can be used for cross-functional team management.

Prioritize the shared backlog for cross-functional team management

Priorities shift constantly, making cross-functional team management difficult. One of the most important parts of Agile methodology is the prioritization of key project deliverables and making sure every team member understands them.

During this step of the process, team members meet to look at the product backlog and prioritize overall goals. They collectively decide which goals (new functionality, bugs, risks) they absolutely must accomplish, which they would like to accomplish, and which they might focus on if they have time left.

This ensures everyone is on the same page and pulling in the same direction. Ideally the shared backlog should be groomed once a week.

The other important aspect of prioritizing goals? Ensuring that nobody is “blocked.”

Blocking happens when someone cannot complete a task because they don’t have access to the information or resources required to do so.

For example, a developer may not be able to program a web page until they receive an assessment from the designer. By prioritizing your shared backlog, you can assign milestones to each step of your project, to ensure it flows smoothly and nobody gets blocked while trying to complete their tasks.

Consider the following tips in order to effectively prioritize your team’s backlog:

• Understand the value of each item: Read through customer feedback and user stories to understand what will bring value to your end-product. Understand which features worked or didn’t in the past and discuss which items will have the most positive impact on other stories and goals. This will help you focus on prioritizing features that add the most value.
• Understand the risks: Constraints or risks could include team capabilities, missing tools, costs, or approaching deadlines within specific departments.
• Use the MoSCoW method: Place items into one of four “buckets”: “Must Have,” “Should Have,” “Could Have,” and “Won’t Have.” Following that, you can rank each item in order of priority.

Cross-functional management means planning sprints together

Once everyone understands team goals in order of priority, you’ll need to set up what is known as a sprint.

A sprint is a set period of time during which specific work must be completed and ready for review. During a sprint planning meeting, the team agrees to what product backlog items will be completed, and collectively outlines which priorities and tasks each team member must complete before the next sprint.

Most teams plan weekly sprints, however sprint periods can be any length of time.

A sprint meeting should consist of all team members, a Scrum Master, who facilitates the meeting , and a Product Owner, who clarifies the details, acceptance criteria, and questions. Usually, team members alternate taking on the Scrum Master role.

Planning the sprint is absolutely critical because it clarifies expectations and ensures everyone knows their roles and responsibilities before diving into their work. It also minimizes miscommunication and confusion. Planning sprints not only keeps everyone on the same page, but also keeps the project flowing without potential blockers (see step 1).

Here are some tips for effective sprints in the context of cross-functional team management:

• Be ready: Make sure all sprint candidates are properly prepared for the sprint.
• Set doable sprint goals: Ensure that product backlog items (PBI’s) are small enough to complete during the sprint, and ideally small enough to be completed within a few days. If backlog items are too large to complete within a sprint, split these stories into smaller pieces.
• Review the definition of DONE: Ask your team to imagine what the product will look like after the sprint is done. Then ask them how they will demonstrate the sprint goal is complete. This shifts the team’s mindset from simply stating the goals to considering how they will be delivered and presented.
• Discuss new information: Anything that might impact the plan, such as known issues, concerns, or updates, should be discussed in the sprint planning. Discuss any dependencies discovered during the planning.
• Reflect on the previous sprint: Leave time to discuss what went well, what didn’t, and how future sprints could be improved.
• Groom the backlog each sprint: This lets you add/subtract items that are new or have been achieved, as well as bring up any questions the team may have for the product owner.

Schedule daily stand-ups

One critical step of agile cross-functional team management is ensuring that members of your team are all on the same page is a daily stand-up.

Here, team members meet to answer three questions:

1. What did I accomplish since the last meeting? 
2. What am I working on until the next meeting?
3. And what is getting in my way or keeping me from doing my job?

A daily stand-up gives members a chance to clarify what they can accomplish, and what needs to be improved. It also lets everyone briefly list any problems or delays they may have, so other team members know when to jump in to help out.

If someone is behind or has upcoming conflicts, other team members can plan accordingly.

This step is particularly important for cross-functional team management because teammates are often blocked by one another.

A daily stand-up ensures that nobody is prevented from moving forward with their next task. It’s also a great way to ensure that every person is held accountable for getting through their task list.

A daily standup can be conducted in a couple of ways:

• In person: the entire team meets (usually in the morning)
• Asynchronously: Each team member posts their daily to-dos in a shared space such as Slack (this option is great for remote teams).

What are some tips for making your daily scrum more effective?

• If you meet in person, try doing it standing! This reduces rambling (because ain’t nobody got time for that) and keeps everyone focused.
• Do it in front of a screen with your project management tool visible. This will allow your team to process the information visually.
• To encourage a collaborative atmosphere and ensure everyone is truly in sync, ask each team member to speak (not just the Scrum Master).
• Agree on a stand-up routine. This will prevent procrastination or the possibility that such meetings may be skipped some days. Whether you decide to do it in the morning or the afternoon, consistency is key.
• Avoid discussing new ideas. This diverts attention from the three main questions, and reduces the meeting’s efficiency.

Ensure good communication

Effective communication is probably the number one hurdle for cross-functional team management, largely due to the fact that everyone works in different spaces. For this reason, a common issue for CFTs is members not knowing when tasks are completed. Communication guidelines will ensure that every single person on your team will know when a task is completed and when the baton is handed over.

Nothing is worse than a task going unfinished because of a blocker, which is why you MUST have your communication guidelines in place at the very start of the project.

Use communication tools:

One of the most effective ways to set up communication guidelines is by leveraging a project management tool such as Asana, Trello, Jira, Wrike, or Basecamp. This allows your team to organize your project, set deadlines, assign tasks to the appropriate people, and keep all messages and notes all in one place. You can then collectively agree on which actions signify that the baton is handed over. For example, using Asana to assign a completed task to a project manager could signal that the task is ready for the next step (such as account review).

Stay in sync across your stack

Now you might be wondering what happens if different members of my team use different tools? This is especially common in CFTs, since different departments often have their own preferred suite of tools. Rather than asking your CFT members to all use the same tool, let them use the tools they’re used to.

Simply sync their tools together using Unito. Doing so will sync all the information relevant to the project, including updates, messages, comments, notifications, label, tasks, and more, between each tool.

This means that team members will get live updates about each other’s work progress and responsibilities. It also ensures your team members don’t have to waste time adjusting to new tools, but can continue to benefit from seamless communication and collaboration.