Cross-functional Team talks

A cross-functional team brings together people with different skills, such as design, engineering, product management and research, to work on one product or problem. Instead of handing work from department to department, the team shares ownership of the outcome.

This way of working matters for UX because many design problems can’t be solved by designers alone. When the people who research, design and build sit in the same team, decisions are made faster, assumptions are tested earlier and less is lost in hand-offs. It also brings friction, which is why how such teams are built and run gets so much attention.

The five talks here date from 2014 to 2018. Jeff Gothelf covers Lean UX in the enterprise and lessons from five years of Lean UX (UX Poland, 2016). Laura Klein talks about building happy product teams (Mind the Product, 2016), Paul Adams calls for the end of navel gazing (UX London, 2018), and Frans Johansson gives “Collaborate Innovation”.