Assigning features to teams rather than assigning front-end or back-end work?

Question

The system that i work on has a front-end and a back-end. At the moment, my team is working on the UI tasks and other team is working on the back-end tasks. There is also another team which handles legacy system tasks. Our target is to retire the legacy system and replace it with the new one which has a front-end and a back-end.

There are about 8 members in each team.

Going forward, management has decide to shuffle above mentioned teams and another team to create 4 teams, each containing 8 members.

Each team will be working on a feature of the system (front-end and back-end work). Any single team won't own the back-end or the front-end.

We follow agile and Will this approach be good when going forward or do we have to make any other suggestions to make this work?

Answer 1

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

A front-end without a back-end is not working software in my book, ofcourse you need a single team that creates a fully working piece of functionality. To be able to deliver working features end-2-end you need a cross-functional team. Meaning the team should be able to execute all neccacary disciplines to make a full working product.

Slicing vertically should be an Agile teams main focus, delivering working software each iteration.

Workshop

There is a training exercise you can try to get better in making smaller vertical slices and getting everyone to understand the concept, its called Elephant Carpaccio:

The Elephant Carpaccio exercise is a great way for software people to practice & learn how to break stories into really thin vertical slices. It also leads to interesting discussions about quality and tech practices.

• Elephant Carpaccio exercise by Alistair Cockburn.
• Detailed step-by-step: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TCuuu-8Mm14oxsOnlk8DqfZAA1cvtYu9WGv67Yj_sSk/pub