Tips for Good Communication in Software Development Teams

After working for about 7 years as a professional Software Developer, I have come to realize that communication is a skill as important as our technical knowledge.

We focus and spend hours and hours understanding bits and bots of that new framework “you have to learn! ”, yet we, for the most part, seldom work on communicating better with our team members .

Communication is a skill as important as our technical knowledge

Communication has an impact on people, which is why doing it right should not be an optional or a nice to have. It’s a matter that every manager should make sure that a team gets it right.

Communicating well is a skill

Some people may not believe or realize it, but in my experience, this is one of the most important reasons why some people plateau and fail to grow in their careers.

Communication is a huge topic, and as such, I want to clarify the topics discussed in this article. I won’t talk about how to communicate better for sounding a smart dude, to prepare your next big presentation, or how to market your side project better.

This article, instead, will be focused on emotional intelligence and how to apply it to the challenging situations that happen every day where communication plays a crucial part.

Why is Communication so important?

Communication is a hard thing to crack for every team: it is indeed influenced by several aspects that go way beyond coding. Before being programmers, we are humans. As such, we all have different personalities, upbringings, values, culture, and language.

Despite all the differences that may exist between team members, I feel we can find some ways that can help teams communicate and work better together.

What I mean by “Communication”

First of all, when I talk about communicating, I do not mean you should be forced to socialize, or that you should start your days talking with your colleagues about your weekend plans and a detailed list of what you did the day before.

If your colleagues are OK with that, by all means! But that’s not the point. You don’t have to be friends with your colleagues in order to be a great team member, you just need to be a decent human being.

What we want to talk about in this article is how to make sure we can communicate with our colleagues in a way that:

• gives them the opportunity to share their point of view
• gives them respect, regardless of seniority (or anything else)
• is non-threatening
• helps them, or you, improve at what we do

You don’t have to be friends with your colleagues to be a great team member, you just need to be a decent human being