Different teams for different work

Every cross-functional team should have the skills it needs to complete the work. That’s important for achieving a fast flow rate of work because the team doesn’t have to wait on contributions from outside.

Every team, to have a complete skill set that means it doesn’t have to go outside itself, needs all of the roles that make up a cross-functional team. That might include product, delivery, content, design, development, testing, etc.

The problem with every team being the same is that work is never the same.

Some work might require design but not content. Other work might require lots of development but not so much design.

Perhaps the solution is to have different team templates, still cross-functional, but with predefined focus on certain types of work.

One team could have the skills to do more new product development work, another be skilled in optimising existing products, and another particularly good at customer service or payment capabilities.

These teams shouldn’t be set up to be ‘the payments team’, for example, they should just have the skills that enable them to do that kind of work well.