Cross-Team and Cross-Functional Collaborations

Engineering teams require a high degree of collaboration to deliver most projects. The level of collaboration needed in a team can differ, but no team works in isolation. Engineering Managers are the face of their team. They are usually the owners of most of the collaborations of their team.

Collaborations can be with other engineering teams, product teams, or design teams. They can be your customers (they receive a product or service from you) or your team can be their customers (you receive their product or service). They can also be your partners, working together toward shared goals. This communication is called cross-functional or XFN collaboration.

While working with other partners, there will be upward or downward dependencies. Upward dependencies are those on which your team is dependent, and downward dependencies are those where your partners are dependent on your team. Managing complex XFN collaborations is a skill that all managers must possess.

During the interview process, you are expected to demonstrate that you can handle and lead complex collaborations.

The interviewer will focus on one or a few of the areas mentioned below.

Communication with stakeholders

As a manager, you should communicate effectively with all stakeholders. The format of your communication is also important. For major partners and stakeholders, you should conduct meetings on a regular cadence. With some partners, you may need to wait on a weekly basis, and with some partners, every quarter or every half is fine too. You should know how to set up these communication channels effectively.

Asynchronous communication can be used to share status updates, make announcements, or send emails via company-owned communication channels. These channels can be email, Facebook Workplace, Slack, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, or any other technology used in your company.

Another important aspect of communication is sharing dependencies with the right people at the right time. Whenever plans change that might affect upstream or downstream dependencies, it is important to let the other teams know as soon as possible.

Suppose you estimated a project would be completed in the first quarter, but it became apparent in the middle of the first quarter that it is very unlikely for the team to meet the deadline. You have to communicate this to the teams dependent on the project’s completion, so you can work with them and find a workaround. Similarly, an upstream team might be working on a feature just for your team, and the project that depends on the feature gets dropped. In this case, timely communication can save the upstream team from wasted effort and help them reprioritize.

Managing conflicting priorities

It is not uncommon for Engineering Managers to manage conflicting priorities. Suppose that Team A has an upstream dependency on Team B. This could lead Team A to think its work is the most important in the company and expect to be prioritized without knowing about Team B’s other projects. Team A’s project might not seem as important to Team B, or it might be the case that Team B simply does not have the context to understand why Team A’s work is so important. An EM must navigate these conflicting priorities and direct their efforts to the right tasks at the right time. There can be many other reasons for conflicting priorities, such as the leadership wanting to ...