Anyone who has watched a submarine movie can recognize the iconic ping of an active sonar system. The sonar pulses soundwaves out into the dark ocean and listens for the returning echo, marking targets and unexpected terrain.
For those in a remote-first or hybrid environment, the home office can start to feel like a submarine of its own, self-sufficient but isolated as it carries out its work. But in the world of software development, good communication is crucial to defining and reaching goals, especially for engineering teams working together on complex projects.
Built In San Francisco talked with engineering leaders at company insight platform Crunchbase and health research platform Evidation Health about how their teams dive deeper while collaborating across time zones. Read on to learn about the ways a strong communication culture can take on the role of identifying obstacles, anticipating the unexpected and finding paths forward — no matter how murky the water.
What’s one key communication habit you’ve developed and encouraged among your team?
Act on discomfort. Especially in remote-first or hybrid environments using video chat, getting people on the same page in conversations can be especially tricky. The good news is most of us seem to have a good detector for these situations – maybe someone shares a different understanding of a deadline or doesn’t mention a priority you’d expect them to have. We often will sit there thinking, “Hmm, that was unexpected” but don’t act on it, and that seems to be where most misalignment comes from. That’s the opportunity to speak up, ask the question, clarify, and get folks on the same page.
The best communicators aren’t afraid to restate what someone said or ask what seems like an unnecessary question. They’re comfortable asking “just to clarify” or “so I understand you correctly.” The more you can trust and elevate that feeling in your gut, the better you’ll ultimately be at getting people moving in the same direction.
Why is this an important habit to cultivate, and what effect has it had on the team culture and the way your team works and collaborates?
The “wrap up” phase of a project can be the most important for your visibility and growth as a technical leader. Developing project communication skills is critical, and that can usually be broken into three phases: planning, execution, and wrap up. Leaders tend to prioritize getting better at the first two as ultimately they have the biggest impact on the success of the project at hand. For example, if you don’t communicate clearly around planning and execution, the project is likely to go off track. The “wrap up” phase, however, often gets skipped or overlooked and so much growth as a leader comes from the elements in this phase. Our team has emphasized two of these to help our culture and our continuous improvement: recognition and retrospectives. At the end of the project, especially one in which you are a leader, find ways to recognize the work and effort of the people that contributed, even if it’s as simple as a public Slack message or a shoutout on a daily group call. Also, plan a conversation to discuss what worked and what didn’t in the project. So many powerful lessons are often lost to time because no one thought to discuss them or write them down for the future.
So many powerful lessons are often lost to time because no one thought to discuss them.”
What advice do you have for other engineering managers who are looking to create healthy communication habits among their teams?
Daily standups are a critical tool to understand what people are doing, but there’s a lot of missed value when individuals don’t explain the “why.” Changing the goal of these updates from explaining technical progress on a task to describing progress towards larger goals can demonstrate ownership, ensure alignment, and reinforce objectives.
A team member who shares, “I made progress on Task A yesterday, and intend to continue working on it today” will certainly give you visibility into how they spend their time. However, a team member who says, “I made progress on Task A, which is a prerequisite for Task B, and which ultimately keeps us on track to finish our project by the end of the sprint” does a number of important things for the team. The detail shows they care about the full scope of the project, gives an update on a dependency affecting others and reminds the team of its stated goals, so we see ownership, alignment and reinforced objectives. Get your team talking in terms of goals and you’ll find everyone working better together.
What’s one key communication habit you’ve developed and encouraged among your team?
As an engineering organization that embraces and enjoys work-from-home contributions, reinventing ways to improve communication within and across teams is key to making our projects successful. With over 30 engineers on our team contributing from 8 time zones spread across 5 countries, it is paramount that we work towards preventing information silos.
We as a team tried and tested many communication patterns that made other organizations successful. After adapting and improving these patterns with the team, the one habit that has made the most impact has been using our existing communication tools to encourage everyone to speak up and share their thoughts. At Evidation, we rely on a bevy of tools like Slack, Google Hangouts, Jira, Confluence documents and emails to ensure information reaches everyone across our organization.
Why is this an important habit to cultivate, and what effect has it had on the team culture and the way your team works and collaborates?
When I joined the Evidation team, I had a vision to help all team members understand each communication tool and to encourage them to outline their thoughts in a shared forum. Practicing Agile Scrum as our project management strategy has given us an opportunity to refine these practices sprint by sprint, month by month. Now, when a new team member joins our mighty team, their onboarding partner can walk them through the essential Slack channels to collaborate in, the meetings to join and where to find the home for documentation.
When we consistently combine communications tools with giving every team member an equal voice, we are able to quickly problem solve, gain insight into the progress of the projects and provide opportunities to follow up with decision makers.
Additionally, this habit of frequent and open communication has helped create a thriving collaboration culture that prides itself on maintaining the highest standards for product development.
This habit of frequent and open communication has helped create a thriving collaboration culture.”
What advice do you have for other engineering managers who are looking to create healthy communication habits among their teams?
An engineering manager plays a crucial role as the “hub” for communication flow. Given the nature of the role, my advice would be to get to know your team, their perspectives on how the team is communicating today and their ideas for what successful collaboration means.
When I joined Evidation in 2020, I developed rapport with the team with a series of one-on-ones to get to know my teammates, their perspective on current state of affairs and their work styles, and I also setup informal gatherings to get to know each of my teammates at a personal level in a more informal setting.
With regards to nurturing any new habit in a team setting, the key things are to get the buy-in from the team by developing new ideas as a group, setting a course to establish effective systems, and making sure to define key performance indicators for measuring the effectiveness of the idea. When you as a leader have shown that you are willing to listen, be inclusive while seeking everyone’s input and be flexible to evolve based on feedback, you’re on track to build buy-in across the team. Good luck!
