Agile Network India-Ahmedabad Title:Cross-Functional Collaboration Key to Agile by Harshal Pol Date:Jan 2023 Hosted by:Tntra

1. Energy to
Synergy
CROS S - F UN CT ION AL
COLL A B ORAT I ON KEY TO
B E AG I LE

2. Agenda
• Understanding Agile
• Understanding Cross-Functional Challenges
• How challenges can be turned in to Opportunities
• How can Agile help in this process
• Case Study: Use LeSS for more, an implementation of Large-Scale Scrum in a Cross-Functional Setup
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3. Introduction to Agile
• Individuals & Interaction over processes & tools
• Working Software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to Change over following a plan
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4. Why do we Need Cross-Functional Teams
• Work involves or impacts multiple departments/functions
• Requirements are to be taken from diverse people
• The outcome targets larger audience from different functional backgrounds
• The outcome is aimed at integrated working of different functions
• …….
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5. Challenges in Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Different Perspectives (Multiple functions)
• Different levels of knowledge, awareness and exposure (Layers of Abstraction)
• Different understanding of objectives (Everyone has a different objective in relation to their function)
• Varying priority of work (Based on their respective functions)
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6. Turning Challenges to Opportunities
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• Different Perspectives (Multiple functions) can be helpful in building comprehensive solutions
• Different levels of knowledge, awareness and exposure (Layers of Abstraction) can help in designing appropriate UX for
different user roles
• Different understanding of objectives (Everyone has a different objective in relation to their function) can help in
identification of integration touch-points and aid in LLD for creating layers of abstraction
• Varying priority of work (Based on their respective functions) is useful in prioritizing deliverables

7. Case Study
• A food processing company in Norway operating from raw to retail
• Throughout MRP to cover entire journey of F&B products from source to stomach (every ingredient should be tracked)
• Challenges
• Client had never used a software
• The intention of using software initially was merely compliance
• Many actual workers had never used computers for work
• Compliance required many details which were not tracked currently
• Every department had their own requirement from other departments which weren’t clearly understood
• Development team had very little understanding of the domain
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8. Case Study – Cross-Functional Aspects
• We needed to understand requirements from each department
• Every department knew only their inward and outward and not what happens before or after
• Every interdepartmental entry required manual data entry (the decimal problem)
• They couldn’t jointly agree to one flow as they were all interested in their own workflows and why that was important
• The client had limited understanding of software dev so couldn’t wait longer to see what’s being built
• As it was F&B there were numerous compliances to be met and without causing incurring damerages
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9. Case Study - Why LeSS
• A lot was needed in too little time
• To replace the existing software we needed the whole flow to work at once
• We still needed to build it in iterations so we could verify the development at every step
• We needed separate teams working in integrated manner
• And finally, we needed something that was flexible enough to let us learn with time and can be tweaked to meet our
needs. SaFe was just too formal and strict for our team.
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10. Case Study - How we did it
• Since Integrated flow was not available with them, we divided teams and synced up and then agreed with them
department wise solutions
• Team orientation and awareness sessions were important to stay on track
• We started developing in bits and pieces initially and then started weaving these bits in to one integrated system with
every step
• Explaining the team at every step, how this transformation is helping the project and them individually too to keep them
motivated
• Meetups and games to lighten up and interact beyond work with the client
• Creating human bridges to ensure seamless interaction between teams, for instance, having dept representatives in
our team who would interact with respective department heads at client’s end
• Reporting problems with transparency → Collaborating to find solutions → Verifying whether it works and repeating
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11. Key Lessons I learned
• There are never things that you can’t tell but just ways to tell them – effective communication in cross-functional
collaboration goes a long way
• Let your fear guide you to overcome it – address the key challenges in cross-functional collaboration instead of running
from it. The earlier you solve it the more time you save later
• Agile is not about rules & frameworks but about navigating challenges, finding your ways to solve problems and
conflicts
• First step to solve a problem is to accept that there is a problem and then its just a piece of cake
• There is nothing like an already mature or professional team, teams and individuals both mature and grow with every
project…. Respect each other’s weaknesses and leverage individual and team strength
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