Communication issues in outsource dev teams
Tags: Delivery, Outsourcing, Communication, Team Management, Problem Solving

Photo by Laurentiu Iordache on Unsplash

Managing a team of people is exciting and challenging by itself. A team of highly-skilled, super-intelligent developers is even more thrilling.

But what if we bring in the equation a team from the customer? Software development outsourcing companies always do this. They never learn this lesson — working with an external team that pays you is always hard.😊 Anyway, here we are — a team with an outsourced piece of work to be delivered in time, on budget, blah, blah. Who will be the hero who’ll manage the stuff and get all the “learned lessons” (aka snaps) in the end? Right answer: the outsource team manager (call them scrum master, team lead, PM, or whatever) Well, I’m exaggerating a bit. Sometimes the managers could get a bonus alongside the snap. In sporadic cases, they could receive a pat on the back as well. 😊

Getting the customer and in-house teams to collaborate smoothly is one of the first headaches of the managers and the primary tool we use to get this working is communication.

Communication with the team in our company and the customer’s one brings different risks and challenges. Setting up a smooth process is essential for achieving the goals and always remaining in a collaborative, agile working environment.

Establish the communication rules right from the beginning

The start of collaboration can make or break an engagement. It’s a good idea to set some ground rules right at the beginning, like:

Setting up communication channels, especially for distributed teams

Perform stakeholder analysis to understand what’s the best way to communicate with everybody

Set up some checkpoints or triggers to evaluate if the communication is correct and not getting in the way of the delivery

But even if everything is set up nicely at the beginning, a lot of things can go wrong. Because we are humans, we are all very different and have different needs.

The following examples of communication issues are based on a team-customer relationship in an outsourcing engagement. However, I’m sure this can be projected in many other kinds of relationships.

The team members don’t interact with the customer’s team

They don’t answer in the chats, are silent in meetings and talking only when they have to. This type of behaviour could have so many motives, some of them quite fuzzy. However, this could have some inevitable consequences, like:

Missed opportunities because of information gaps

Unblocked blockers and untied dependencies for too long, which can lead to missed deadlines

Unsatisfied customer due to lack of proactivity from the team

Disengaged team

As with any other problem, we need to identify the root cause. Of course, there could be some personal stuff, like an introverted person who talks the exact amount of word requested and nothing more, but it’s unlikely that the whole team is like this. If it is, we have another problem.

Below are some actions we could take if some or all team members are silent during the meetings:

Confirm if the team understands what’s the meeting about

Have a preparation session. Add a detailed agenda.

Identify the best communication approach with the customer team and coach the team

It could be that all they need is short, brisk, clear information and any divagations annoy them. Or they could want more details, explanations of the matter from a different perspective, brainstorming from all the team members or a bit of chit-chat before the serious stuff. Give some hints to the team and it will do the magic. (Communication approach is part of the stakeholders’ analysis and depends on a lot of variables. This is a topic for another discussion)

Help the team

If you are already in an excruciatingly dragging meeting, we can and must take the discussion into our capable hands. Even if I’m not technical and have no idea of most of the terms in the agenda, I can always start with some questions. As Simon Sinek says, it’s cool to be the idiot in the room. Ask directly the person you think could answer the questions, confirm what was just said, ask clarification of details with simpler words. It works almost always — the people start talking the stuff they know best.

Involve everybody

It’s not good to have people in meetings who do not participate. When it’s always the same person, it is even worse. Identify the ones who are there but not there and involve them in the discussion. The direct question works fine, but be sure they are listening to what’s being discussed; otherwise, it will be awkward. If they don’t bring anything to the meeting, better to not include them in the next ones. They can see the recording for details or read the notes.

To be continued…