Tools to spread knowledge and communicate company wide, by Rajiv Mathew
At the end of the day, software development is all about people. You need effective communication channels that help people work together to achieve the vision of your firm. Throughout the past decade, I have worked in the IT industry and have come across some wonderful tools that aid software teams with their communication challenges. Let us look at a few of them.
Newsletters
Sending a quarterly newsletter to the entire organization is very useful because it provides employees with an overall perspective of the company and its projects. Inviting the employees to contribute gives them a forum in which they can express their views. Similarly, newsletters regularly sent from the human resources, finance, administration, and marketing teams helps the development team gain a wider perspective of what is happening on the operational side of the company.
Intranet
The intranet is an effective tool for communication in the workplace. One of the companies I previously worked with used the collaboration platform Jive, which is an effective tool that enables developers to share best practices on projects. My current organization uses Yammer, another great option. The advantage to using these platforms is that they help with knowledge management. Think of it as a Facebook clone within an organizational setup. The intranet is the best place to share technical insights on various projects so that knowledge does not remain tacit in nature.
Company Websites
Even though the corporate website is an external-facing medium, many team members visit the website often for company updates and news. Featuring developers on the company website adds a sense of belongingness, and thus, increases employee engagement and retention. I have often posted press releases and multimedia on the corporate website and then sent links to the developers so they can read about what is happening in the company. If your onshore client has an extended team offshore, and you are a partner, a micro site can be used to communicate information to your team. I remember using Google Pages as a micro site to create and share information with a partner many years ago.
Storyboards
This is an excellent way to communicate the vision of a project or product to the entire development team. Even complex problems can be broken down into simple sketches so that everyone understands them. White boarding ideas and having developers use the storyboarding methods helps on all kinds of projects. If you have a distributed team, you can do this via Skype with online storyboarding tools such as StoryBoardThat.
Process Flow Diagrams
When developers build a platform, explaining the user flow or the process flow is extremely critical for understanding how the system is supposed to operate. Once the process flow is clear to the developers, the development would most likely be easy. This is where we also make use of wireframes to demonstrate the interaction flow using click-through prototypes.
Twitter
We have created hashtags for certain technical topics in the past, and then developers— including those from other companies—have provided multiple insights for solving problems. It is an interesting social experiment to try.
Live Feed
We were working on a big project that involved more than 100 developers, so we used Skype to start a group chat in which team members posted updates for the day, and people observed the updates on a big monitor screen. The entire experience worked much like the big TV screens in stock markets!
The 30-Second Rule
Another tactic that often works is to use the “30-second rule” while communicating with development teams. If you can respond to the message within 30 seconds, then you should do it. If you can respond to a developer’s query instantly, he or she will be more efficient. This holds true for any client-related communication. Faster replies make clients feel that you are fully engaged on the project and on top of things at all times.