Use-cases of Visual Communication for Software Professionals
Tags: productivity, webdev, ios, computerscience
Published: 2020-01-20 17:49:18


<b>Executive Communication </b>


Don't write long weekly emails to the team. Send them quick (video) updates on how the company is doing. How was the customer trip? How is the quarter looking? Are we going to meet our OKRs? 

 

Explain features and capture product demos
 

Goal-1 for every software team is producing good software. No discussion required. 


However, most teams don't understand that good software also means clear, concise and delightful documentation. New features need explanation and text-heavy docs are not always desirable. 

 

 

<b>Improve the quality of your product with better bug reports </b>

Most companies don't have stringent policies on bug reporting. With distributed and modern offshore teams, the information required by the developer to root cause the reported bug may not be available for another 12 hours, so the developer will make assumptions and go on  with his business, wasting precious company time. 

 

What if a screenshot or a video of every "critical" bug is mandatory? 

 

What are the steps required to reproduce the problem? 

 

Every test machine should have a script to capture all the environmental details and logs before the bug is submitted. Just like the focus on business culture, engineering culture is developed by actions and not by guidelines parked on a wiki page. Just look at a bug report filed by your Team Lead/Architect or VP Engineering to gauge your company's engineering culture.  


A training video to explain how the feature works can be shared with the internal team right after feature-complete during the development cycle. Product demo videos are super helpful for customers and can be published once the feature is shipped. A lot of back and forth emails and meetings are required for knowledge transfer and troubleshooting if the feature or product documentation is lacking clarity. Quick video generation and publishing will transform how your engineering teams communicate with the rest of the organization IOHO. Customer on-boarding videos are a must-have for every progressive software company. 


<b> Improve knowledge base </b>
 

If you are executing well, your team will grow quickly and new hires will need the information to get started. Do you have an internal knowledge base to answer 80% of the questions expected by a new hire? Documenting workflows and  key training videos is as important as providing nice and shiny gear to your new hire.

 

Improve new hire on-boarding with training videos
 



<b> Communicate faster with your team. Avoid meetings for every discussion </b>
 

This one is simple. Just observe your calendar for the past few weeks and look at the number of meetings that could have been simple video updates and asynchronous email conversations. 

 
Don't encourage meetings when emails + videos will suffice


<b>Improve customer success and support functions </b>
 

How do you capture the issue reported by a customer? Is it always possible to understand what the customer reported using a small text email? Our customers make screen capture process an integral part of the workflow so that all the information can be captured in one call before the issue is escalated to the engineering team. 
     

Remember that asking the customer to try out 10 different things when he files a bug is not going to result in a long-term happy customer.

 
Customer success increases your brand loyalty
 

<b> Design Reviews </b>
 

Record every important meeting and design review conducted by your team. How many times have you got into a discussion where someone forgot what was concluded in a previous design review meeting?