I recently observed a team that has made an effort to become more cross-functional. One of the team members during their Sprint decided to take on a story that focused heavily on C# programming language and their expertise was with another language. I have to say a big Kudos to that person and that team for being brave to push themselves beyond their comfort zone!

Some questions come up though:

1. With that person deciding to attempt to broaden their experiences, are they putting the team’s sprint goals at risk?

If there’s no risk, they should feel totally empowered to give it a try! If there is a risk, then perhaps the question could be asked is whether this should be tried at this time.

2. How can someone facilitate their learning in a quicker fashion?

Would it make sense to adopt some XP practices and do pair programming? My gut answer is, YES!!! If you’re unfamiliar with Pair Programming, this Wikipedia article from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming can help.