Tips to Improve Collaboration Between Developers and Other Departments
The complicated relationship between IT and business departments has been the subject of countless Internet jokes.
While these may seem amusing because they sound true, it’s important not to underestimate the ability of effective communication and teamwork to improve the situation.
Keeping all the moving parts in sync
Software development involves many complex elements, and fostering teamwork is the most efficient method to ensure everyone is on the same page.
As technicians tackle code and fix errors, teams dealing with customers often have to manage high-maintenance clients or challenging queries, which may need a deeper understanding of the development process than they can access.
The issue of isolated IT sections within companies isn’t new.
However, it can negatively affect product quality, customer happiness, and corporate culture. This “walled garden” of technology, or segregated development teams, can create a sequence of impacts across various departments of the company.
Why is cross-departmental collaboration so important?
Instead of depending only on specific expertise, cross-departmental collaboration improves problem-solving capabilities and productivity by enabling more seamless information and task sharing between teams.
This is especially critical in software development, where the availability of correct information is critical.
Cross-departmental collaboration can make project progression faster through the production line and motivate teams by creating a culture of shared objectives and continuous feedback.
Some of the additional advantages include:
- Quicker launch times
- Improved resource utilization
- Boosted productivity
- Greater employee contentment levels
- Enhanced customer satisfaction
5 reasons you might experience bottlenecks between development and other departments
Lack of proper developer handoff
Developer handoff refers to the procedure where you pass the details, knowledge, and tasks from one department to the programmers' use. It’s like delivering your finalized designs and user scenarios to be coded by the developers.
Although it’s exciting to see your efforts materialize, not having a structured handoff process can lead to misunderstandings, doubts, and even postponements. When teams can’t trust each other to provide precise details or fulfill their project roles, it damages the whole joint endeavor and creates a segregated mindset.
Departments don’t understand each other’s processes
Another obstacle between development and other departments arises from a lack of comprehension or awareness of each other’s procedures.
How often has the phrase “They just don’t understand!” been said during interactions with members from different teams?
Plenty of examples exist, whether it’s customer service advocating for repairs that developers don’t consider top priority, or developers not aligning with sales strategies to finalize a deal.
If departments fail to understand each other’s objectives and the impact of their work on others, they’re likely to be out of sync.
Conflicting priorities and unrealistic expectations
Contrasting goals and priorities have long been a cause for both irritation and humor.
What did the developer say to the sales rep? Nothing. He was too busy coding a platform like Facebook but better in under two weeks.
Every team has its tasks and responsibilities. Sales teams aim to satisfy clients and secure quick deals, while DevOps is designed to maintain stability with all the changes introduced by new features.
The issue surfaces when these objectives collide, when teams put excessive pressure on each other due to impractical expectations, or when they fail to agree on the “color and alignment of the 7 red lines” as shown in the following video.
Lack of a common language between business and IT
Technical and commercial departments each have their own specific language.
For software engineers, terms like pull requests and git-commits are part of daily work, just as Management and Marketing departments often deal with terms like ROI, KPIs, CRO, and CX.
However, the absence of a shared language between business and IT extends beyond just terminology. It’s about a failure to include developers in the broader business environment and corporate strategy.
Research conducted by David Norton and Robert Kaplan over a span of 15 years indicates that the best-performing companies actively engage all employees in their business vision.
Not using collaboration tools for software development
This issue comes down to the lack of insight departments have into each other’s procedures. Without tools to simplify and enhance communication and collaboration, developers and other teams may struggle to stay in sync with schedules, outputs, and demands.
Immediate messaging, document sharing, and time and task management tools are essential for cooperation across teams.
For instance, if the development team uses a specialized project management tool that isn’t accessible or can’t be easily used by other departments, it can result in notable problems.
Tips to fast-track collaboration between developers and other departments
Include other teams early in development
The earlier other departments participate in development, the more straightforward it becomes for them to collaborate with the developers and be invested in the project.
Teams such as the Design department are typically involved as early as the discovery stage. However, others like Sales, Operations, or Legal departments can feel more like an afterthought.
You shouldn’t postpone feedback requests from other teams until the project’s end. This can risk damaging cross-departmental relations and increase costs for the project itself.
Moreover, remember that early involvement translates to early adoption, and it’s beneficial to have as many people as possible supporting your project.
Define a workflow for submitting requests to the development team
Suppose the designers ask your developers to incorporate an animation. They may not understand the time investment this brings.
Or a sales rep requests a developer’s presence on a call to provide in-depth technical responses to a client. This could add an extra 2 hours to the developer’s workload, on top of coding an additional 300 lines for the animation.
Teams depend on each other to succeed, but it’s crucial to streamline this cooperation.
Establish a transparent procedure for other departments to pass requests to the development team. Assign a single person, like a Project Manager, to gather and rank these requests after discussing them with the developers.
Share tools and knowledge
When departments are denied access to the same tools and data, there’s a guaranteed recipe for a disaster.
It’s calculated that an average employee wastes over 20 hours weekly searching for information scattered across systems and teams.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t imply that everyone should use Visual Studio Code or directly upload their raw data into a database. It could be simpler to share tools and knowledge with your development team.
You could:
- Employ a joint project management tool like Jira, ClickUp, or Asana to generate and supervise tasks between development and other departments.
- Establish a central hub for all crucial files, which includes technical playbooks and documentation.
- Preserve your passwords in a password manager, allowing developers to grant access to other departments without sharing unencrypted passwords. This could be helpful if you’re starting to build your application and haven’t yet implemented user management.
Build a strong designer-developer relationship
It’s well-known that successful custom software development is based on a robust relationship between designers and developers; one can’t exist without the other.
Both developers and designers need to have the capability to share ideas and keep each other updated.
Consider methods to promote dialog between design and development teams via regular touchpoints, feedback, and common tools. Collaborative design tools such as Figma or Sketch are equipped with features designed to make the workflow between designers and developers smoother.
Developers can take the CSS code straight from the design file, and they can also exchange feedback with designers within the same platform. This functionality simplifies the tracking of resolved feedback and pending items without too much back-and-forth.
Set up a meeting before each handoff to development
Handoffs can provoke anxiety for both parties involved. If you’re the one giving the handoff, it may feel like waiting for the outcome of a three-layer cake, wondering if it will turn out to be edible.
If you’re on the receiving end, you might be concerned that the cake recipe you’ve just received is missing a critical step.
Arranging a meeting before each handoff is an effective method to ensure everything is in order and prepared for development.
Suppose you’re getting ready to pass your designs on to the development team.
You can create a checklist to review during the meeting, posing questions such as:
- Do you have access to all the design files?
- Are developers receiving a separate .zip file containing all the icons and illustrations, or do they need to download these from the design file?
- If there’s no clickable prototype, do all team members agree on the expected behavior of the primary interactive elements?
- What is the optimal method for developers to give feedback on design-related issues that they encounter as they code?
Enable fast feedback between departments
Prompt feedback is necessary for developer success. Yet, it’s not rare for people to be excluded from the communication loop, become non-responsive, or provide feedback too late in the development cycle.
Industry studies highlight delayed responses as one of the top bottlenecks in software development, alongside task-switching and limited understanding of product features.
Developers require quick responses to help them distinguish what’s working and what’s not, and to make necessary adjustments. This can get complicated when other departments are part of the process, each with its work commitments and priorities.
Setting joint objectives and success metrics can motivate other teams to contribute quickly.
Feedback might also be delayed if other teams aren’t aware of developmental progress and timings. Consider arranging periodic cross-department meetings to discuss ongoing development, share updates, and ensure everyone is informed.
Provide cross-training between devs and other teams
We’re not suggesting that everyone should learn coding (even though it could unexpectedly prove useful), but having a shared language does help. This is why we typically urge Project Managers to participate in beginner coding courses to enhance their team support capabilities, as we’ve previously mentioned in one of our interviews.
Of course, cross-training should be mutual. For developers, acquiring sales, marketing, and even writing skills not only provides a common understanding with other teams but also expands their own set of skills.
It aids in putting oneself in the customer’s shoes, writing more comprehensible error messages and business emails, and understanding the application from various perspectives.
Climb over the wall of confusion using Agile
Cultivating a shared understanding of Agile methods, principles, and work ethics provides an excellent base for collaboration with developers.
This extends beyond knowing what “backlog grooming” or a “Scrum ceremony” means. It’s more about developing a collective mindset concerning software development.
For example, Agile focuses deeply on fast turnover, repetition, and continuous enhancement. This indicates that changes will happen frequently.
However, someone from a different department whose job is to maintain consistency might find this difficult to adapt to. Known as “the wall of confusion”, this tension between change and stability can be mitigated by adhering to common Agile principles.
Work with an experienced cross-functional team
Silos present one of the primary problems in software development. The separation between the engineering team and others can set off a series of “side effects,” ranging from obstacles and conflicting interests to delays provoked by weak communication.
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