MenisMas' Blog

​It was several years ago first time I read about cross training concept, I was back to practice running after few years stopped and no sport practicing in my life. I understood in that moment, some professional dedicated to sports practice other sport or sports as part of their training to improve their metrics.

I've been practicing in the people working with me and myself the concept in Software Development, and it is a fact Developers Cross Training improves developers skills. As the most basic example, if a developer understands how internally web server (IIS, JBoss, Tomcat, Apache or any other web server solution) will identify faster any bug or problem in their code as well as make better decisions to develop a feature in the current software.

Another good example I've seen in he last few years is closer to communications, a developer could be working for a period more closer to the customer, like being part of es features being presented to a customer, it will help developers to deliver a software closer to customer expectations.
I know this has been told in many places and it is part of popular methodologies, but until you don't practice for a period of time you don't see how good is the idea and how good result could be.

Here is where team rotations is a good tool to apply developers cross training concept, a developer could rotate to be a product owner assistant for a period of time or a product owner could rotate to a customer service role. It is not just the benefit to improve people skills as Cross Training improves in people what day by day work don't, and also, it helps developers and others to know and discover what they really watt for their professional careers.