Ingredients to successfully manage cross-team engineering projects

Managing cross-team engineering projects can be challenging, but with the right approach and collaboration tools, success is within reach. Discover practical tips for encouraging cross-functional team collaboration, whether your teams are remote or in-office, and learn how to drive progress and momentum across diverse teams with Tobias Deekens, Remote Principal Engineer for Frontend Architecture at commercetools.

My workday began as expected, with tasks and meetings neatly planned out in front of me. Then, a small surprise landed in my inbox: A large, important project involving multiple teams. Although it had quietly begun in the background a few weeks earlier, it was now suddenly under a tight deadline, with just four months to go.

In those first few days, I struggled to view the project positively. The pressure felt overwhelming. But after a few calming walks, I knew I had to dive in and get started.

Not only was this project cross-functional, but it also involved numerous stakeholders and many unknowns. I had never led something of this scale before and didn’t even know where to begin. With no blueprint or guidelines to follow, I felt anxious at first. But soon, I realized that the lack of structure gave me a lot of freedom. I began to immerse myself, moving from understanding the organizational context to identifying the project’s core principles and then onto practical processes.

As an engineer at heart, it’s tempting to jump straight into the technical aspects of a project. Questions like, "Which repositories are we touching?" and "What programming languages are we using?" or even "Are there different databases?" naturally come to mind.

But before diving into the technical details, it’s essential to step back and look at the bigger picture — the organizational context.

When you zoom out, you realize that large cross-team projects are often tied to a quarterly roadmap with external expectations from customers. These projects might involve 30+ contributors across 10 or more teams, each with varying roles, from engineering managers and product managers to UI/UX designers. The success of such projects depends on cross-functional collaboration — aligning these diverse perspectives and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Additionally, when navigating the organizational hierarchy, you’ll encounter stakeholders at various levels of senior management. Understanding the broader context is crucial to facilitating effective communication, keeping people informed about progress and addressing blockers. This insight also helps you map out how the technical aspects of the project align with stakeholder needs and relationships.

This was around the time I began to feel overwhelmed by the scale of this “little” cross-team project. The numerous contributors, stakeholders, and their differing needs and expectations felt daunting. And then there were the many dependencies scattered across different teams.

I turned to project management literature for help, hoping to find some practical guidance. But I quickly realized that few books offered the immediate, actionable advice I needed — and I didn’t have time to spend days reading.

Instead, I decided to create a visual timeline. You might remember Gantt Charts from the past — yes, the ones where reality rarely matches the plan. But I still believe that a project without timelines and milestones is far worse than one with them. As the saying goes, "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."

So, Gantt Chart and milestones it was.

During one of my walks, I had a realization: I had been involved in many cross-team projects before — I just hadn’t led them. Reflecting on those experiences, I began to jot down what I liked and disliked about the projects I had seen. Patterns emerged and I distilled them into a set of axioms for running any project:

• Progress over deadlines: Progress is infectious and boosts morale. People want to be part of successful projects. Progress is also the foundation for hitting deadlines, which should be a motivator but not something that instills fear.

• Breaking down silos: Organizations are often structured into autonomous teams, each with its own domain. But this setup isn’t ideal for cross-team projects. Success depends not on individual teams but on collaboration between them. To achieve this, team boundaries must be broken down.

• Momentum over small bursts: Large projects have longer timelines and progress becomes harder to manage if contributions happen in sporadic bursts. Building momentum through steady, continuous progress is key to maintaining collaboration and moving forward.

• Negativity is the enemy of progress: Negativity can be draining and a small spark of it can overshadow the positivity of many others. Address negativity as soon as it appears and hold everyone to a high standard of positivity toward the project.

With the axioms defined, I returned my focus to stakeholders and their varied expectations regarding project communication:

• Product: Focuses on business value, effort and progress toward delivering it.

• Contributors: Value clear guidelines and the satisfaction of making meaningful progress.

• High- and mid-level management: Care about meeting deadlines and maintaining employee satisfaction and growth.

• Other departments: Want predictable results and delivery for external communication.

• Casual observers: Interested in occasional updates without any deep involvement.

At this point, I felt like I was off to a good start, though ironically, I still wasn’t sure how to kick off the project. Perhaps you’ve felt the same on your projects. Over time, I compiled a list of elements that helped me get started.

• Project charter: This document acts as a central landing page for the project’s scope, objectives, participants and collaboration tools. It’s essential for success in both in-office and remote teams.

• Project lead team: A project of this scale requires shared responsibility and clear ownership. Just as engineering teams are cross-functional, the project lead team should be as well. Their role is to align stakeholders and remove impediments.

• Defined communication channels: Whether through email, recurring meetings, Slack or tools like JIRA, effective communication is crucial and should be clearly outlined in the project charter.

• Kickoff meeting: Once the basics are set, a kickoff meeting helps inform everyone of the project’s goals, roles and expectations. This is key to preventing assumptions and ensuring alignment.

• Project board with milestones: Tools that offer milestone tracking help align all teams involved. Issue tracking is essential for managing progress and deadlines.

• Engineering spokesperson: With many people involved, communication can quickly become overwhelming. Having a spokesperson helps streamline communication and ensures smooth execution.

• Spikes and engineering cookbooks: Small groups can evaluate different technical approaches to a problem before all teams are confronted with them.

• Weekly digests: Digests — small, high-level updates — are a great way to keep everyone aligned and informed. These digests celebrate progress and help keep stakeholders connected. Solutions for these spikes must be documented in actionable cookbooks, ideally as step-by-step guides.

• Celebration and retrospective: Retrospectives can start with a fun event with games, quizzes and small gifts like project-branded stickers, then segueing into collecting learnings. This should involve both contributors and the project lead team. Sharing these learnings across the organization can help improve future projects.

It’s funny how obvious some things seem in hindsight. Large projects involve more people, which means more communication — often resulting in higher emotional costs. Initially, this can feel daunting and never-ending. But it’s essential to remember that project management is ultimately a people business.

Processes and tools matter, but people drive projects forward. Early on, focus on providing structure and trust in your team’s ability to adapt. Progress will be rocky at first, but with time, communication and reinforcement, momentum will build.

Projects often come with unexpected challenges — or “sideshows.” Sometimes priorities shift, requiring adjustments across teams. But not all sideshows are negative. You can create your own opportunities to improve code quality or address smaller goals without significantly slowing progress.

Cross-team projects present significant opportunities for growth and learning for both individuals and organizations. By encouraging collaboration, using the right tools and maintaining positive communication, these projects can turn challenges into growth experiences.

Ultimately, the success of a cross-team project hinges on the ability to coordinate, communicate and collaborate across all functions — regardless of whether the work is done remotely or in the office.

To read more from Tobias, check out his article How we evaluated the impact of GitHub Copilot for 3 months.