Successfully building and leading cross-functional teams

Cross-functional teams: The most important facts in brief

• Cross-functional teams combine multiple skills to be able to work on a result area completely and independently.
• You make decisions directly within the team, which improves speed and quality.
• A cross-functional team is worthwhile if there is a clearly defined area of responsibility, sufficient work volume, and genuine decision-making authority.
• Advantages arise primarily from shorter decision-making processes, greater accountability, and better coordination between specialist perspectives.
• Difficulties arise when roles, responsibilities, or decision-making processes are unclear, or when individual specialized roles become bottlenecks.

What is a cross-functional team?

Cross-functional teams are groups in which many areas of expertise are combined in such a way that they can jointly take responsibility for a clearly defined goal ("end-to-end"). To do this, the team needs all the essential skills to plan, implement, test, and deliver without external dependencies.

• Pooling of expertise: The team covers all the skills necessary to achieve the objectives.
• Shared responsibility: Success and quality are the responsibility of the entire team, not individual functional areas.
• Few dependencies: Transfers to other departments are eliminated or greatly minimized.
• Focus on outcomes: The team works on a defined set of outcomes with measurable benefits, rather than on isolated tasks.

Difference between cross-functional and functional

Classically functionally organized teams include people with the same expertise in one department, such as development, marketing, or design. In this model, working on a product or project requires multiple handovers between units. Decisions take longer because each department has its own priorities, processes, and responsibilities.

Cross-functional teams break down this structure. They combine the relevant roles so that a result area can be handled entirely within the team. This eliminates the need for a lot of coordination across departmental boundaries. Decisions are made where the expertise is available.

When is it worthwhile to set up a cross-functional team?

Setting up or deploying a cross-functional team is worthwhile for your company if an area is so clearly defined that the team can handle it from start to finish on its own.

This always works very reliably when there is enough work in this area and, as a rule, no decisions by external bodies are necessary. Under these conditions, a cross-functional team works faster, requires less coordination, and takes responsibility for results.

Good conditions for a cross-functional team:

• The result can be described very precisely. Examples: a product module, a complete ordering process, or addressing a target customer group.
• The objective remains stable. There is a robust framework for decision-making and planning.
• There is a constant flow of work in this area. The team remains continuously busy.
• All core competencies can be brought into the team. Depending on the area, these include, for example, development, UX, data analysis, or marketing.
• The team can prioritize independently. Decisions do not have to be constantly sought from managers or committees.
• Dependencies on other teams are manageable. The team can carry out most steps itself.

These prerequisites immediately reveal the advantages of a cross-functional team:

• The team does not waste time on handovers or waiting for decisions.
• It can map the entire process internally.
• The work and deadlines can be planned very accurately.
• The team's working methods bring them very close to the customer, enabling them to understand and serve them better.

What difficulties frequently arise in cross-functional teams?

Cross-functional teams solve many internal coordination problems, but they also bring their own difficulties. Most of these arise when roles, decision-making processes, or responsibilities are not (yet) well defined. If this is the case, the team may lose momentum and encounter recurring conflicts.

• Unclear responsibilities: If it is not clearly defined who makes decisions within the team or which role is responsible for which area, delays and conflicting expectations arise.
• Conflicts between different professional perspectives: Different disciplines sometimes pursue different goals and apply different evaluation standards. This can lead to discussions about priorities and approaches.
• Specialists become bottlenecks: Individual specialists, for example in data, infrastructure, or legal matters, quickly become the point where tasks pile up.
• Different working methods within the team sometimes lead to additional work and misunderstandings.

How do I build a high-performing, cross-functional team?

When setting up a cross-functional team, you should describe the goal or outcome of the working group in great detail, assemble the necessary members based on their roles and skills, and then define responsibilities, decision-making processes, and workflows.

Step 1: Define the result/goal

The objective forms the basis of the team and determines which tasks and decisions are its responsibility.

• Very precise formulation of the area of responsibility, for example, "Creation and optimization of the checkout process."
• Clear demarcation from other teams to prevent overlap
• Set measurable goals that provide guidance for planning and prioritization.

Step 2: Define roles and responsibilities

A cross-functional team must cover all the skills required to work independently on the objective.

• Determination of core roles, such as product management, development, UX, data analysis, or marketing
• Assignment of responsibilities per role so that responsibilities are clear
• Determining how roles with a relatively small project share and time requirement can be integrated.

Step 3: Clarify responsibilities and decision-making processes

• Determining which decisions the team makes itself and which are made externally
• Disclosed framework for prioritization and goal setting
• Binding formulation of quality standards and acceptance criteria

Step 4: Agree on working methods and processes

• Common workflow such as Kanban or Scrum with defined steps, agile working
• Regular coordination meetings such as planning, review, and retrospective
• Uniform documentation standards to ensure that information remains accessible in the long term

Step 5: Manage participants and contributors

A cross-functional team needs agreements on how it will work with other departments.

• Overview of all contributors and their requirements
• Established process for how tasks are assigned to the team, for example via intake forms or a prioritization meeting.
• Agreed format for status reports and expectation management

How do I lead a cross-functional team?

As the leader of a cross-functional team, ensure that you provide your team with a workflow in which, as far as possible, all decisions can be made quickly and efficiently. 

At the outset, binding ground rules should be established to structure the daily work routine. These include:

• Coordination channels for technical and organizational issues
• Expectations regarding documentation and communication
• Dealing with conflicts and differences in decision-making
• Rules regarding periods of concentrated work and availability

It is then your job to ensure positive cooperation and create a working atmosphere that leverages the strengths of a cross-functional team:

• Address contradictions immediately, argue professionally and objectively, and do not postpone decisions.
• Check in regularly, but briefly. Use boards that show the status of the work.
• Define how you handle synchronous and asynchronous communication and how quickly feedback can be expected.
• Give each team member decision-making authority and discuss decisions in reviews.

How can I provide suitable spaces for multiple cross-functional teams?

As an employer, you are faced with the task of providing suitable working conditions for several cross-functional teams without having to permanently reserve separate spaces for each team.

Since many employees in marketing, development, product, or consulting regularly work remotely, traditional, permanently assigned team rooms are hardly economical anymore. Actual utilization would be low, while costs would be high.

A suitable approach is to switch to desk sharing and bookable team zones. This involves using workstations, rooms, and team areas via a booking system instead of assigning them permanently. Your teams reserve areas exactly when they want to work together in person, for example for planning, reviews, workshops, or coordinating results.

The advantages of bookable team zones, rooms, and individual workstations: 

• Lower vacancy rates: Fixed desks often remain unused in hybrid working models. Bookable workspaces avoid these idle times.
• Even as you grow, there is no need to rent new office space, as your teams can easily share the existing facilities.
• Your teams can select spaces that suit the task at hand, for example, for focused individual work, group discussions, workshops, or hybrid meetings.
• Using the booking software, your teams can ensure that the required zones and rooms are available as soon as they start working on site.
• Rooms and zones can be quickly adapted to different team sizes and tasks, which was not possible with previously defined areas.

PULT is your booking software for desks, rooms, and zones. With PULT, give your cross-functional teams the security and freedom to book suitable spaces at any time.

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