Cross-functionality is a spectrum

When people say you should be cross-functional, they usually mean you should build cross-functional teams, i.e. a team that can handle the entirety of their stack (BE, FE, DevOps, etc.).

What most people don’t realize, however, is that cross-functionality is a spectrum, not a boolean. The spectrum evolves more or less like this:

1. You are not cross-functional at all, i.e. you depend on external parties to solve your core business problem (e.g. you work with an external provider for your DevOps capabilities).
2. You are cross-functional at the organization level, i.e. you have dependencies between teams (e.g. you have a Backend team and a Frontend team).
3. You are cross-functional at the team level, i.e. you have dependencies between team members (e.g. you have Backend engineers and Frontend engineers on the same team).
4. You are cross-functional at the individual level, i.e. you have no dependencies whatsoever (e.g. your engineers can work across the entire stack).

Like everything, cross-functionality has pros and cons. The biggest pro is that Cross-functionality removes dependencies, and the biggest con is that Cross-functionality creates silos. Overall, the pros outweigh the cons, which is why most organizations are building cross-functional teams, but that doesn’t mean we should be blind to the cons.