> In Theory There Is No Difference Between Theory and Practice, While In Practice There Is
I for one used to believe in a cross functional team. I used to believe that everyone in a team should be able to do every task in the team. I still believe it somewhat but my ego is shattered.
I worked on one team where the lead believed in this more than I ever did. Consequently, I was doing tasks I sucked at and therefore didn't enjoy s lot more because as she said, it will help me improve.
Long story short, I didn't improve. I just got frustrated and I quit. I guess it was all fine from the leader's perspective as her team stayed the way she wanted anyway.
I went down this tangent to remind people that when things are going well, we can say a lot of things that are nice like kumbaya my lord but when things are tough is when our ideals and morals are actually put to the test.
When poop hits the fan, will leadership throw someone under the bus? Will team members feel like leadership will throw people under the bus? Kind of a difficult question that we can't answer until we are there and at that point it is too late.
I left a role because we owned it as a team, and as a lead on the team, I opted to take the shit work, so I found myself in yaml hell, configuring and tweaking configs in ever cryptic error messages. I was there to code and design efficient systems. Yaml sucked. Eventually, I left. We should have brought on someone who likes that shit.
Do you mind elaborating on the definition of "cross functional team" here? It seems either non-standard or something that may differ by industry.
Where I've worked, a cross functional team is one made up of functional experts from different groups. A team where everyone could do the work of everyone else was a team that was cross trained.
> I for one used to believe in a cross functional team. I used to believe that everyone in a team should be able to do every task in the team.
Learning some skill requires X hours. Maintaining that skill requires Y hours/year.
Those numbers vary both by task (webdev has quite a bit of churn, where server OSes tend to have decade-long support lifecycles) and by person (not everyone learns at the same speed, and sometimes people learn different kinds of things at different speeds).
A team where anyone can do anything can work or now work, depending on how hard the things they do are, how many different things there are, and who's on the team.
> In Theory There Is No Difference Between Theory and Practice, While In Practice There Is
I for one used to believe in a cross functional team. I used to believe that everyone in a team should be able to do every task in the team. I still believe it somewhat but my ego is shattered.
I worked on one team where the lead believed in this more than I ever did. Consequently, I was doing tasks I sucked at and therefore didn't enjoy s lot more because as she said, it will help me improve.
Long story short, I didn't improve. I just got frustrated and I quit. I guess it was all fine from the leader's perspective as her team stayed the way she wanted anyway.
I went down this tangent to remind people that when things are going well, we can say a lot of things that are nice like kumbaya my lord but when things are tough is when our ideals and morals are actually put to the test.
When poop hits the fan, will leadership throw someone under the bus? Will team members feel like leadership will throw people under the bus? Kind of a difficult question that we can't answer until we are there and at that point it is too late.