Blog series – Training cross-functional teams

Today organizations strive to work according to the Agile mindset. They use Scrum or Kanban or DevOps or SAFe® or any other way of IT delivery that we refer to as “High-performance IT delivery”.

In high-performance IT delivery, people are organized in cross-functional teams that together take responsibility to deliver the right IT support for business processes, with the right quality level to deliver business value to their customers.

A team member working in a cross-functional team requires additional skills and capabilities compared to working in traditional “siloed” teams.

In this series of blogs, we will elaborate on a wide variety of aspects related to the training of people in cross-functional teams.

1. How to train cross-functional teams
2. How to be a good cross-functional team member
3. Does every team member need coding skills?
4. Five different ways to train a cross-functional team member
5. Challenges of agile at scale
6. Do cross-functional team members need business knowledge?
7. What’s the difference between training on-line and on-site?
8. Solutions to the testing challenges when working agile at scale
9. Solutions to the challenges when working agile at scale – part 2
10. Three tips when working with teams with people from different backgrounds
11. Sustainability from a social perspective
12. Three tips when working agile at scale
13. Today’s teams need Roles, not Functions
14. How to train team members about business knowledge
15. Happiness is a key quality indicator for team members
16. Trust is a key quality indicator for team members
17. The role of cross-functional teams in SAP implementations
18. Why quality and testing terminology matters
19. How to foster a learning culture

If you have any ideas or requests, please let us know, this series is a work in progress, so your contribution is highly valued!

Authors:

Eva Holmquist – Eva Holmquist has more than twenty-eight years of professional IT experience, working as a programmer, project manager and at every level of the testing hierarchy from a tester through test manager. She has also worked with test process improvements and in test education as a teacher and with the development of courses including a Swedish ISTQB Foundation certification course. Author of the book ”Praktisk mjukvarutestning” (Software Testing in Practice) as well as science fiction and fantasy novels. Eva works as a Senior Test Specialist at Sogeti helping clients improve their testing practices using her broad experience in system development, process improvements, and education. She is a frequent speaker and has during the last year held presentations about agile testing, DevOps and quality assurance, cognitive quality assurance and bias in artificial intelligence.

Rik Marselis – Rik Marselis is the principal quality consultant at Sogeti in the Netherlands. He has assisted many organizations in improving their IT processes, establishing their quality & testing approach, setting up their quality & test organization, and acted as a quality coach, QA consultant, test manager and quality supervisor. Rik uses his more than 40 years of experience in systems development and quality and testing to bring fit-for-purpose solutions to our clients. Rik has contributed to over 20 books on quality and testing, of which 6 as the main author. His most recent book in the TMAP body of knowledge is “Quality for DevOps teams”. Rik is a much-appreciated keynote speaker and workshop host at conferences.