Summary
We believe cross-functional team collaboration delivers value faster for users and organizations. However, it’s not always obvious what exactly cross-functional collaboration actually looks like. What practices are necessary to the team’s success? How do you measure team performance? As a developer and a designer, we have direct experience working together and leading teams on truly cross-functional product design and delivery. In our talk, we’ll provide specific examples of what that kind of collaboration can look like, while sharing some of the values and principles that have motivated us.
Key Insights
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Developers struggled to make trade-offs without understanding the larger user context beyond user stories.
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Product strategists’ detailed user stories often became too prescriptive, frustrating both themselves and developers.
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Designers possess valuable context that often isn’t shared, leading to information silos on teams.
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Paloma Medina’s BICEPS model helps identify psychological needs at work: belonging, improvement, choice, equity, ability, and significance.
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Visualizing progress toward user outcomes during biweekly showcases increased team motivation and connection to purpose.
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Pairing, inspired by driver-navigator roles, is a flexible collaboration practice that boosts empathy and problem-solving across roles.
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Successful pairing involves fluid role-swapping to leverage each participant’s expertise and co-create solutions.
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Pairing is not limited to developer-designer collaboration but can include product managers, quality analysts, and even customer support.
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A roles and responsibilities exercise helps teams discover pairing opportunities by surfacing offers and needs across members.
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Leadership modeling of trust and psychological safety is crucial for effective cross-functional collaboration and pairing.
Notable Quotes
"Developers didn’t understand why they were building the product and how their work related to what mattered for users."
"It’s like an assembly line where you don’t know what is happening before or after your work."
"BICEPS stands for belonging, improvement, choice, equity, ability, and significance—the human needs we must meet."
"Visualizing how units of work contribute to user capabilities really changed team morale."
"Designing as a team means centering all humans involved, not just users."
"Pairing is two people with distinct roles doing an activity together simultaneously, like a driver and a navigator."
"Empathy and trust develop through pairing and working together, not before it."
"Our approach is about amplifying everyone’s expertise, not removing design jobs."
"Leadership on our team demonstrated trust and credit, making psychological safety a norm."
"Just ask someone to work with you—nobody should stop you from making human connections at work."
Or choose a question:
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