What’s wrong with Software Engineers Communication?
Software Development is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Every second it creates something new, driving processes to work efficiently, freeing people from routine work, unveiling new opportunities for them and making living the world better.
And to create really awesome things (what is meant by awesomeness here is additional value, breathtaking user experience, and saved costs), Software Engineers need to collaborate. Great Solutions are born by putting great minds together.
Most of Software Engineers are deeply technical people having a thirst for efficiency and optimization in their DNA. And in addition to this, there is a widespread belief, that Software Engineers in most cases are introverts.
These two factors shall make all Communications short, 100% purposeful and effective.
But they don’t. And let’s see why.
In this Article, you will find out about the Issues, related to Software Engineers Communication, and derivative Insights.
Survey Subject
To unveil aforementioned Issues and Insights, 7 simple Questions were prepared:
- How much time do you spend to request information?
- How often do you receive an immediate answer?
- Why do you request information?
- How much time do you spend to provide information?
- How often do you provide an immediate answer?
- How do you receive information?
- Do you receive accurate information?
Respondents
A bit more than 60 people of different Roles from different Software Engineering Companies (product and outsource) were surveyed.

The Roles Distribution more or less represents the standard distribution of Roles in Software Development Companies:
- ¾ is Software Engineers, represented by Business Analysts, Developers, QA and Support Engineers and Solutions Architects;
- ¼ is Project Management, Marketing and Sales.
How much time do you spend to request information?

Looking at this Diagram it worth mention that 91% percent of Respondents spend 1 hour or more each Day trying to find some Information.
Assuming and taking 15 min absolute value for “< 0.5 hour” Survey Option and 6 hours for “> 4 hours” one, it can be concluded that:
On average, 2h 50m are spent on a daily Communication to request Information
Keep this value in mind — we will get back to it later in this Article below.
How often do you receive an immediate answer?

Average Part of Cases when a Requestor can get an answer during 5 minutes is 50%.
Insights
25% of all Questions can always be answered during 5 minutes
Implication — they are very easy, common and lie on the surface
25% of all Questions can never be answered during 5 minutes
Implication — they are too complex, require additional time, research, discussions etc.
If a Question in not answered immediately, it will lead to overheads
Overheads are related to managing reminds about their request, scheduling meetings, follow-up etc.
Why do you request information?

The Answers Statistics for this Question is terrific!
70% of fellows cannot find Information! Technical fellows! Technical information! In Software Engineering Companies!
How much time do you spend to provide information?

Looking at this Diagram it worth mention that 84% percent of Respondents spend 1 hour or more each day trying to provide Information to other people.
Assuming and taking 15 min absolute value for “< 0.5 hour” Survey option, we can conclude that:
On average, 1h 56m are spent on a daily Communication to provide Information
Keep this value in mind — we will get back to it later in this Article below as well.
How often do you provide an immediate answer?

The average number of cases, when a requested person can provide an answer during 5 minutes, is 56%. (You may have noticed that this is more than the average value [50%] for the opposite question “How often do you receive an immediate answer?” above; keep reading to find out the reason)
How do you receive information?

Insights
The two most preferred Communication Channels are Email and Messenger, scoring together 50,6%
Both are written forms of communication.
Implication — it is asynchronous, which gives an ability to parallelize people’s activities.

Do you receive accurate information?

And finally, we got to the most interesting part of the Article.
77,4% of Respondents receive inaccurate Information for each 4th Requests.
Insights
30% of all received Information is inaccurate
Do you still remember the figures mentioned above?
On average, 2h 50m are spent on a daily Communication to request Information
On average, 1h 56m are spent on a daily Communication to provide Information
We interpret this data as follows:
- Each day a Software Engineer spends on average 2h 50m looking for Information from other people, failing to do this on their own (see “Why do you request information?” above), looking for a right person to aks, reminding about their requests, scheduling meetings and follow-up etc.
- Each day a Software Engineer spends on average 1h 56m trying to sort out, plan and answer incoming requests, being distracted by new incoming requests and reminders for old not yet processed.
- All this daily activity (2h 50m + 1h 56m) = 4h 46m leads to 70% rate of correct responses.
- 30% of Queries are resolved with inaccurate information, which means that (4h 46m x 30%) = 1h 26m are wasted.
Each day 1 hour 26 minutes are wasted
Do you still keep the next in mind?
50% as an average number of cases people say they receive immediate Answers
56% as an average number of cases people say they provide immediate Answers
We interpret this data as follows:
The most frightening fact is that people cannot estimate their actions from the side:
- They think that they provide information faster than they really do
- They think that they provide accurate information but they don’t
- They (and nobody else) cannot foresee the real impact on company’s costs, caused by inaccurate information and consequences of its use: redesign, rebuild, retest, redeliver etc.
Conclusions
Estimate yearly budget of purposeless Communications of Software Engineers in your Company. Ready to post it in comments?
1,43 x [Number of Software Engineers] x [Average Hour Rate] x 250 (Average Number of Working Days in a Year)
As it was said above, we cannot make great things without Communication. We just don’t know yet who will become our best interlocutor tomorrow.
Okay, this is the problem statement, you will say, and what are the Solutions? We would like to leave it as an open Question. Question to you.
P.S.:
The original one was closed to not affect the results, and a copy was created. If new results will change the picture much, we will update this report.
P.P.S:
If you liked the Article, join the AIFORSE Community and get involved in the incredible journey to the new Era of Society Functioning.

