Let’s ground this in something I see all the time in the consulting world: teams that are not cross-functional. In Scrum, we expect teams to have all the skills needed to take an idea from spark to ship with designers, developers, and testers, all working together like a well-oiled machine. The payoff? Speed and ownership. You can turn a customer’s need into a product feature without tripping over red tape or waiting on someone else’s schedule.
But what happens when teams aren’t cross-functional? It’s like trying to cook a gourmet meal with half the ingredients locked in someone else’s kitchen. You get delays as you wait for another team to pitch in. Dependencies creep in, tying your progress to someone else’s priorities. You burn time and money on coordination, chasing emails and meetings to keep everyone aligned. Priorities clash, complexity spikes, and suddenly your “simple” project feels like herding cats.
I’ve seen teams live with these pain points for years, not because they love the chaos, but because they haven’t chosen to change. They’re picking the delays, the dependencies, the endless sync-ups, even if they don’t say it out loud. As Rush reminds us, dodging the decision is a decision.
So, what’s the move? Choose to change. Start small and invite that UX expert to join the team, even if they can only commit part-time. Get an Infrastructure DevOps specialist to embed with you for a few Sprints while you set up your environment. Don’t just borrow their skills; focus on learning and growing those capabilities within your current team. Experiment, reflect, and tweak. You don’t need a perfect cross-functional team overnight, but you do need to stop choosing the status quo.
What you don’t change, you choose. If your team’s stuck in a swamp of dependencies or drowning in the waste of excessive coordination, it’s time to act. Reach out to Improving to explore ways to experiment with breaking those barriers. Let’s build teams that own their work and deliver value, no excuses.
