T-Shaped Skills: Deep Expertise, Broad Collaboration

T-shaped skills model a professional with deep expertise in one field (the T's vertical bar) and the ability to collaborate across disciplines (the horizontal bar). This is crucial in agile environments where a backend engineer needs to understand frontend constraints or a designer grasps technical feasibility. The primary footgun is becoming an 'I-shaped' person—all depth, no breadth—which creates knowledge silos and slows the entire team down by hindering effective communication and shared ownership.