Why Having A Cross-Functional Team Is Essential For Modern IT Project
As we all know the power of digital transformation and how artificial intelligence/machine learning can change our society, today we will explore the concept of a cross-functional team and why such a team is essential for the success of building transformational projects.
AI-Powered Solution
Artificial intelligence (AI)/ Machine Learning (ML) technologies have the potential to transform business. The advantages of employing AI are numerous and significant. AI can help businesses operate more efficiently, provide cleaner products, reduce adverse environmental consequences, increase productivity, and improve human health.
However, if Digital Transformation is done incorrectly, the unsuccessful transformation projects can have major negative consequences for businesses.
In most cases, technical expertise alone is insufficient to ensure that AI is developed successfully.
How a diverse team is a must when building AI Solutions?
Recently, the IT talent shortage issue seems to be getting worse and worse. Many tech and non-tech companies are having trouble with hiring skilled software engineers. So, what does this have to do with the software team and how can a cross-functional team make a positive impact?
The answer lies in the team of software engineers and data scientists standing behind the system. There’s nothing wrong with hiring the best software engineers and data scientists to get the job done. However, without the conscious effort to bring cross-functionality into the corporate culture, the pool of IT specialists isn’t being discovered properly.
If a team wants to be strong, they need to be diverse in terms of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, since they can solve more problems, leading to AI/AI technologies having more potential to tackle.
Despite the fact that no single company can confidently announce that they are capable of solving the IT talent shortage, a business with different background employees will be more likely to embrace fairness, accountability, and transparency.
Recent developments show that more and more businesses are investing in groups that can ensure breadth across multiple disciplines. Their ultimate goal is to improve their product and how it impacts the world.
Benefits of Cross-Functional Team
When all members bring different technical skill sets to a group, it’s likely that one would learn from the other, and expand their knowledge and expertise as a result.
In an AI solutions development project, people from different backgrounds will work together as a group to achieve a common goal. This could range from front-end developers, back-end developers, business analysts, UI/UX designers, data analysts, data scientists, AI engineers, QA testers, etc.
For example, by working with data scientists, back-end developers might learn better about how to work with data and upgrade his/her skills, and in return, data scientists may gain an understanding of web app interface development, and more.
In addition, because each member in the team is aware of their strengths, they can also share the best practices and perspectives to help other members overcome project barriers and other productivity tricks. There is no reason to keep the information to themselves.
When a cross-functional team leverages just not one kind of best practice, but from various best ones, the project team becomes much more agile and can take advantage of the entire group’s skills.
A cross-functional team also enables the team members to learn about different kinds of tools and techniques each uses for work and whether they can benefit from incorporating them into their work.
The Next Steps
Although these are just the beginning steps to cross-functional team culture, we think highly that it is critical to implement AI & digital transformation solutions. However, in order to come toward such a cross-functionality culture, all of the tech people have to:
- Understand that engineering and data teams can only truly be successful if they are built from the ground up with diverse representation and a culture in which all experiences count for its growth and evolution.
- Invest greatly in recruiting, training, and developing a diverse workforce from the beginning, knowing that this effort is not only an investment in your business but also in the future of industry and society.
- Aware that we must overcome a significant lack of IT-talent resources and continue to face a complex future that requires practical solutions that can be tracked, corrected, explained, and provided barriers of AI when deployed in the real world.
Side-note
Want to know how big data combined with AI will look like? Read our article to know more!
TP&P Technology is one of the top big data consulting services with a team of experienced data scientists and machine learning engineers. If you want to know more about our services, contact us now to know what we can do to help you in your next digital transformation project. We are proud to be the top software development outsourcing company in the Asia region.
