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PMP lesson · People & Team Leadership · Building the team · lesson 4 of 6 · about 6 minutes

Self-organising and cross-functional teams

Agile and hybridFree preview
Goal: After this lesson you can explain who decides what in an agile team, and how to help a team become self-organising without taking decisions away from it.

1The situation

“Please just tell us what to do”

A newly formed agile team on the robot cell's MES integration keeps asking the PM to assign tasks every morning. When a story is finished, they wait for instructions.

At the same time, a senior developer on another team picks a caching approach the PM thinks is slightly less elegant, but it meets the acceptance criteria and is low-risk.

In the first case the PM must help the team take ownership; in the second, the PM must leave the ownership where it is.

2Who decides what

In agile teams, decision rights are clear:

Value
What & why → product owner
Backlog content and order.
Work
How & how much → the team
Tasks, technical approach, sprint commitment.
The PM/servant leader coaches self-organisation with questions and removes blockers. Override a team decision only when safety, compliance or acceptance criteria are at risk.

3Self-organising and cross-functional

Self-organising

The team decides how to do its work: who takes which task, which technical approach, how to meet the sprint goal. The what and why come from the product owner.

Cross-functional

The team has all the skills needed to deliver a working increment: design, build, test, integrate. Few hand-offs to other teams.
Who decides…Agile answer
What to build and in which orderProduct owner (backlog priority)
How much the team commits to in a sprintThe team
How the work is done (tasks, technical approach)The team
Removing organisational blockersServant leader / scrum master / PM
The product owner owns what and why; the team owns how.

4How it looks on the exam

Exam-style question 1. A self-organising team chooses a technical approach the project manager considers slightly less elegant. It meets the acceptance criteria, carries low risk and follows architecture guidelines. What should the project manager do?
A. Override the decision to prevent technical debt
B. Respect the decision, share the concern as a question, and support the team
C. Escalate to the architect for a ruling
D. Record the decision as a future defect source
Show the answer and the decode
Answer: B.
In simple English
A valid, low-risk team decision the PM doesn't love.
What is the question really asking?
The PM's response.
Key words / trigger
“meets the acceptance criteria … low risk”
PMP logic
The team owns how; the PM coaches without taking the decision away.
Why the wrong answer looks attractive
Overriding feels responsible, but it undermines self-organisation.

5Remember this

Your memory card

  • Product owner = what & why · team = how & how much
  • Coach self-organisation with questions; step back gradually
  • Override team decisions only for safety, compliance or acceptance criteria
  • Cross-functional + T-shaped skills = fewer hand-offs
The full lesson in the PMCLEAR app also has:
  • the rest of the lesson (Building self-organisation)
  • a worked example
  • the common traps (wrong vs right)
  • 2 exam-style questions with the decode
  • a 3-question quick check
Open the full lesson → Create a free account
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