Cross-functional Collaboration

One key responsibility of Engineering Managers is to establish clear communication across organisational functions, as they often have greater context and understanding of high-level processes. The job of establishing working cross-functional collaboration often includes defining areas of responsibility, formalising the communication streams, aligning goals, and resolving conflicts between teams.

One of the common symptoms of poor cross-functional collaboration is when team members are blocked by other teams. To tackle this, teams need a culture of open communication and trust that surfaces problems as early as possible. After problem is identified at a team level, Engineering Manager steps in and collaborates with other managers to improve the situation or escalate it to higher levels when necessary.

Effective cross-functional collaboration establishes clearer expectations from all organisation functions and improves predictability of all participants.

As an example of tooling for cross-functional collaboration, teams can have publicly available Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or well-documented external communication processes. These tools help external teams set clearer expectations when working with the team, reducing ambiguity and friction.