How to develop T-shaped people

Let’s say we accept the reasoning for why T-shaped people are valuable. How do we go about developing this in our teams?

It’s most useful to start cross-training for adjacent processes.

Creating T-shaped people is not instantaneous. The most valuable place to start is with adjacent activities in your workflow, that is, any point where we have one role handing off to another one. Cross-training at adjacent activities helps smooth out hand-offs.

Cross-training at adjacent activities helps smooth out hand-offs.

It’s easiest to cross-train on similar skills.

It’s easier to learn skills and technologies that are similar to the ones we already know. This is a nice way for a team to start trying out cross-training if they’re sceptical.

It’s easiest to cross-train similar skills or technology

Make cross-training gaps visible.

Addressing key person dependencies, aka the “bus factor”, is a good argument for cross-training.

If we make it obvious where there are skill gaps on the team, it encourages people to cross-train where there is the least capability. I generally like using a cross-training matrix for…