Successful businesses are built on the shoulders of many different roles and personas. Your personal success certainly depends on your individual contributions, but it also depends on how well you can work across different functions as a team member. Interactions between Developers and Product Management, Developers and Test, or with business focused functions such as Marketing and Sales are key to getting things done in an organization, building a great product, and ultimately your own success! Each role may have different “languages” they speak, priorities and scopes of focus. Navigating these variations is not taught in school, and may initially seem like a huge challenge. Understanding and working well with your counterparts enables everyone’s impact to grow larger than each individual’s contributions, and can help create robust products, close working relationships and increase job satisfaction.

Nic, an Engineering Manager, and Lauren, Product Line Lead, started working together 5 years ago. They have not only built a collaborative engineering/product relationship, but have become good friends as well. They’ll outline the four pillars they think are critical to a great cross-functional relationship: Respect, Empathy, Trust and Communication, and how to cultivate them in your own teams.

You’ll walk away not only with a better understanding of the importance of your colleagues in different roles and how these cross-functional relationships aid in everyone’s success, but also with clear tactics to improve your daily interactions. Nic and Lauren will share their own proven methods for a great cross-functional relationship including; how they support and amplify each others’ needs, effective methods and tools for communicating with each other, and how together they prioritize their work efforts for the most impact.