Cross-team and Cross-functional Collaborations
Learn how to answer questions about collaborations effectively.
We'll cover the following
- Communication with stakeholders
- Managing conflicting priorities
- Managing conflicts with XFN partners
- Trade-offs and dependency management
- Typical Questions
- Tell me about a time your project was delayed because of a dependency on another team. How did you deal with it?
- How and when did you share your roadmap with downstream dependencies?
- How did you learn about the roadmap of teams with upstream dependencies?
- What is the most difficult conflict you or your team had with a cross-functional team?
- What did you do when a cross-functional partner (a person) was not delivering results?
- Give an example of when you influenced XFN partners to change their roadmap.
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 towards shared goals. This communication is called cross-functional or XFN collaboration.
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