At Flux, we’re passionate about building a winning product development culture. In a previous post, I shared how we cultivate this culture; now, let’s dive into practical strategies for making it work day-to-day. Specifically, I’ll share how our fully distributed, cross-functional team of engineers, ML scientists, designers, and product manager collaborate to drive our product roadmap forward.

Here are three of my favorite tips to help your cross-functional team thrive:

1. Use a Roadmap as a Collaboration Tool

Roadmaps aren’t just for high-level planning; they’re powerful collaboration artifacts when tailored to your team’s needs. At Flux, we maintain two roadmap versions:

• High-level roadmap: A macro view of features in the "Now," "Soon," and "Later" buckets.
• Collaboration roadmap: A detailed, sprint-by-sprint view that helps us scope, sequence, and plan work as a team. Here’s a schematic to illustrate:

Our collaboration roadmap includes:

• Swimlanes for key focus areas including major features, UX improvements, and "keeping the lights on" (tech debt, bug fixes, etc.).
• Columns that track progress, from research and design through UAT (user acceptance testing) and production.
• Release slices: Bite-sized increments of features that we ship, iterate on, and improve with feedback from our Design Partners. We represent these using post-its that travel from left to right on our roadmap.

This roadmap not only visualizes progress but also helps us prioritize tasks and understand dependencies, trade-offs, and timelines. It’s our shared playbook for success.

2. Balance Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand

Balancing big projects with incremental improvements is critical. I love the “rocks, pebbles, and sand” metaphor:

• Rocks: Big features or initiatives that are crucial to progress.
• Pebbles: Medium-sized tasks, like significant tech debt fixes or feature enhancements.
• Sand: Small but essential tasks, like bug fixes and UI tweaks.

In sprint planning, we treat release slices as rocks, with prioritized pebbles and sand interspersed. Using Jira, we maintain epics for “pebbles and sand” and ensure they’re represented in our roadmap. This approach keeps our jar balanced, making space for both innovation and iteration.

3. Keep Communication Visible and Close to the Work

As a distributed team, alignment requires intentional communication. Here’s what works for us:

• Centralize discussions: Slack is great for day-to-day chatter but unreliable for work planning. We document key decisions in Confluence and Jira to keep them visible and searchable.
• Leverage “Release Slice Pages”: Each release slice gets a Confluence page that includes user stories, acceptance criteria, mockups, and notes from product, design, and engineering discussions. These pages link directly to Jira epics, keeping discussions close to the work.
• Write it down: A strong writing culture ensures everyone’s on the same page, even across time zones.

Constant Evolution for Better Results

At Flux, we’re always refining how we work together. These practices not only help us deliver a great product but also ensure we’re aligned in our mission: empowering engineering leaders with the clarity and insights they need to take confident action. By centralizing information and prioritizing the right work, we’re building a tool that helps teams like yours move faster with confidence.

How does your team collaborate across functions? We’d love to hear your tips and ideas!