Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Cross-Discipline Teams

Whole teams also include team members from each of the disciplines required to develop and successfully deliver the product. Teams should include developers, testers, and writers, and may also include a product manager, a build developer, a user interface designer, and so forth. It is important that teams have the collective skills to fill the required roles. Note, however, that a “person per role” is not required.

Teams organized by discipline often operate differently from cross-discipline teams. For instance, in waterfall, testing groups may wait until the design phase is complete before they develop a test plan, and testing itself doesn’t typically begin until late in the cycle when a lot of code has been written. Testers ...