How to Lead Cross-Functional Teams: Lessons from a Cisco Technical Program Manager
Cross-functional leadership is one of the most demanding yet rewarding responsibilities in technology management. It involves aligning diverse teams—engineering, product, marketing, finance, and compliance—toward a unified vision while navigating competing priorities, complex systems, and strict deadlines.
In a recent Exponent mock interview, Daki Shasan, a Senior Technical Program Manager at Cisco Systems, shared detailed insights into how she successfully led a large-scale digital transformation initiative. Her experience provides an excellent framework for managing multi-department collaboration, driving adoption, and measuring program success effectively.
1. Setting the Stage: The Digital Transformation Challenge
Daki’s project revolved around modernising legacy go-to-market (GTM) systems across Cisco. These monolithic systems were outdated and hindered operational efficiency. Leadership’s goal was clear — consolidate platforms, improve compliance and security, and enhance customer satisfaction while enabling faster product launches.
The challenge was vast:
- The transformation impacted sales, marketing, finance, and business development teams.
- The program required data integrity, system security, and smooth change management across global departments.
- Budget and time were constrained, requiring careful prioritisation and agile management.
Daki’s role was to orchestrate all moving parts — strategic planning, execution, risk mitigation, and stakeholder alignment.
2. Strategies for Leading a Cross-Functional Team
To manage such a large-scale transformation, Daki implemented several structured approaches:
a. Establishing a Cross-Functional Steering Committee
She created a steering committee comprising key stakeholders from engineering, product, marketing, finance, compliance, and security. This group acted as the program’s decision-making body, ensuring alignment and rapid issue resolution.
b. Dividing the Program into Manageable Phases
Rather than tackling everything at once, Daki divided the transformation into smaller, sequential phases. Each GTM storefront was handled independently, gradually addressing both B2B and B2C systems.
She also set up a Program Management Office (PMO) to coordinate deliverables, maintain timelines, and ensure accountability across all workstreams.
c. Transparent Communication and Feedback Loops
One of Daki’s strengths was establishing a robust communication plan. She held regular briefings, maintained transparency with leadership, and implemented synchronous and asynchronous feedback loops using tools like WebEx and Microsoft Teams.
This allowed stakeholders to express concerns in real time and ensured issues were addressed before escalating.
3. Managing Risk and Preventing Scope Creep
For such complex initiatives, risk management is critical. Daki created a comprehensive risk register to identify, track, and mitigate issues across scope, schedule, cost, quality, and security.
She also instituted a Change Control Process to combat scope creep — a common pitfall in enterprise projects. A monthly steering committee meeting was held to review new requests and ensure that workstreams stayed aligned with the program’s goals.
Metrics and dashboards were central to her monitoring strategy. Using Jira for sprint tracking and Confluence for real-time visibility, she tracked development velocity, adoption rates, and productivity levels across teams.
4. Handling Challenging Stakeholders
When asked which stakeholder was most challenging, Daki identified the engineering team, whose competing priorities created scheduling conflicts.
One engineering team was focused on building a foundational API and authorisation layer but was diverted to handle a business-critical issue causing immediate revenue loss. This delay affected other dependent teams, creating a major schedule risk.
To resolve this, Daki proposed three options:
- Bring in external professional services for support.
- Reduce project scope and maintain schedule.
- Extend the timeline (least preferred).
Through negotiation and empathy, she convinced business leaders to accept scope reduction combined with a beta soft launch. This allowed limited deployment to a small customer group for real-world testing. The data gathered from the beta helped identify performance bottlenecks early and optimise the system before a full rollout.
By demonstrating value through results, she regained stakeholder trust and proved the effectiveness of her approach.
5. Measuring Success: Key Metrics and KPIs
Daki categorised her success metrics into three main areas — Adoption, System Performance, and Operations.
a. Adoption Metrics
- Number of customers migrating to the new platform.
- Customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores (NPS).
- Daily and monthly active users.
- Feature adoption rates and social media engagement.
b. System-Level Metrics
- Code quality (defect rates and test coverage).
- Lead time, cycle time, and sprint velocity.
- Frequency of deployments and reduced build times after moving from monolith to microservices architecture.
c. Operational Metrics
- Latency and response times across global regions.
- Traffic and throughput (requests per second).
- Reliability indicators such as error rates and uptime targets (99.999%).
- Resource utilisation and system saturation.
6. Prioritising Metrics and Establishing a North Star
When asked about prioritisation, Daki highlighted feature adoption and customer satisfaction as her North Star metrics.
For her, the ultimate goal was conversion — tracking how users move from feature interaction (click-throughs) to purchases. She closely monitored:
- Click-through rates (CTR)
- Add-to-cart ratios
- Order conversion rates
She also combined these with qualitative and quantitative feedback using sentiment analysis from customer surveys (Qualtrics, Verint, etc.). This balance ensured that success was not just measured in numbers, but also in customer perception and satisfaction.
7. Lessons Learned from the Transformation Journey
Reflecting on the experience, Daki shared several valuable lessons:
- Strategic Planning is Key: Success depends on clear planning and phased execution, especially in multi-departmental projects.
- Communication Builds Trust: Maintaining open channels—through meetings, dashboards, and updates—ensures alignment and reduces resistance to change.
- Flexibility Enables Success: Adopting agile methodologies like Scrum allowed for rolling-wave planning, quick pivots, and adaptive decision-making.
- Empathy and Negotiation Matter: Understanding each team’s priorities helps resolve conflicts and drive collaboration.
Data-Driven Decision-Making: Tracking the right KPIs keeps everyone focused on measurable outcomes rather than subjective opinions.
8. Feedback from the Mock Interview
The interviewer commended Daki for her structured communication, deep technical awareness, and leadership presence. Her ability to speak in the language of a program manager — referencing steering committees, PMOs, burndown charts, and stakeholder alignment — built confidence in her expertise.
However, the feedback also suggested two areas for improvement:
- Take time to think before answering complex questions — a brief pause to structure responses shows confidence and control.
Provide more specificity — rather than staying at a high level, dive into concrete examples, timelines, and product details to illustrate impact.
Final Thoughts
Daki’s experience showcases what it truly takes to lead a cross-functional digital transformation at scale. Her approach combined strategic foresight, clear communication, empathy, and data-backed execution — all of which are essential traits for effective technical program managers.
For aspiring TPMs or program leaders, her story is a masterclass in balancing technical depth with leadership breadth. It reinforces one timeless truth: transformation isn’t just about technology — it’s about people, process, and persistence working together toward one shared vision.
