Adjusting to Working in a Cross-Functional Team Part II

by | Syndicated

Adjusting to working in my second team at Vend

Since my last blog post I’ve started working on another project as well. I currently work part-time on two projects at Vend. I’ve had to adjust to working in another team. The setup is a bit different here as there are now two testers and four developers (slightly better dev:tester ratio than previously).

At Vend, we’re given a fair bit of power on how we operate as a team – which means that each team is different. The product teams all tend to be of (somewhat) similar size, they all have a Product Analyst, Designer, Product Manager, Developer and QA involved in the project and they are all working towards a product.

But that’s where the similarities stop.

Some teams are distributed across more than one city (like the one I just started working in). This means a fair bit more communication is done through the instant messaging app we use and we use an online Visual Management Board instead of a physical one.

Adjusting to working in the second team means I’ve had to throw away a few assumptions I had about working in a product team at Vend. When I’m unsure of how it works in this new team, I just ask. Up until about a month ago, my “reality” of working at Vend was solely based on working in one team – but that has changed.

Our shared baby

Working in a cross-functional team has made me think of the concept of our shared baby. The feature we are working on being the baby.

I used to think that different artefacts like code, test cases, project plans etc belong solely to the person who was in charge of them.  Before I started working in a cross-functional team,  the code was the developer’s baby and the project plan was the Project Manager’s baby etc. But now I work in a cross-functional team(s), I believe this isn’t the case.

As a project team we worked on the design , I actively seek input from the rest of my team on how to approach testing and we set timelines together (I even have a senior developer in one of my teams advocate for testing time alongside with me).

What I like about this, is the stress on the fact we are a team. We are bringing up this baby together. Now that one of the features (I’m currently on) has gone live – I enjoy watching it take its first steps.

This is Part II of II, here’s the link to Part I