While an IT team is majorly driven by code and logic, what often remains overlooked is the human aspect. With so many brilliant minds working in the same team, the focus never really shifts towards those with such amazing skill sets. Lack of communication has caused problems in many IT teams and has affected their efficiency. Hence, open communication culture and IT team efficiency are a big part of IT project management.
If there is one way you can make your team work better despite the IT talents you already have, it is by ensuring they are communicating comfortably and openly with one another. This article mentions all you need to know about open communication culture and IT team efficiency.
Why Communication Matters in IT
Communication matters in IT because human interactions are usually the least of one’s priorities in IT teams. From developing a SaaS platform to managing a legacy infrastructure, if you are not communicating properly with your team, there may be underlying problems that may lead to chaos in the days to come.
So, what is open communication in IT? Open communication refers to a team environment where individuals can share ideas, concerns, and feedback honestly regardless of hierarchy. In a work setting, an open communication culture is held back with professionalism in mind. But this will only lead to more toxicity among the team members working together in a team.
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Open communication in an IT team includes giving feedback, being open to taking feedback regardless of the hierarchy, sharing knowledge, and encouraging team members to express their views about their specified work freely. Communication helps increase a sense of responsibility, accountability, and comfort in the workplace among teams.
Further, communication helps avoid challenges like a lack of transparency in work, unnecessary fragmentation within a team, and delays in problem-solving. Working in a collaborative team, developers will be keener and quicker to fix bugs or to refactor.
The Impact of Communication on Efficiency and Work Quality
To build a highly efficient team, the team leader must first make sure that the team members are communicating with one another properly. Knowing about a team member’s vision last minute can not only create problems in the project but also promote ego clashes. This makes it challenging for all the team members to work collaboratively, not only on that specific project but in the future as well.
Product owners, DevOps engineers, testers, and developers should all understand the goals and challenges each of them has. A perfect example of this would be, a developer seeking help from their team members beforehand. This increases the code quality, decreases errors that may cost money, solves problems on time, and clears confusion, which creates effectiveness in IT teams.
A real-world case study is GitLab, where open communication through various tools has enabled seamless collaboration across 60+ countries. Needless to say, teams that adopt an open communication culture work with improved team alignment and a good understanding of team goals.
Practices That Support Open Communication
Agile Rituals in Action
Agile methods promote open communication by design. Daily standups can be useful for the excellent performance of an organization in the long run. Moreover, these structured daily standups can help developers share their concerns and reveal blockers and failed experiments.
Short feedback cycles help make everyone in the team accountable for their tasks and conduct. Sprint retrospectives help an IT team reflect on what may have gone wrong, find solutions accordingly, and make success visible to the stakeholders through sprint reviews.
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...Tools and Principles
Using certain tools and principles for communication helps manage teams without chaos. When there are several means of communication in a single team, it may create confusion for one to find the right place to communicate. Specifying communication modes is essential. Some such tools include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, and Confluence. You can also set principles for clear communication, set messaging protocols, and ensure a timely response to team messages.
Promote a Culture of Feedback and Knowledge Sharing
A big part of open communication culture and IT team efficiency is the promotion of feedback and knowledge sharing. When an IT team member is open to sharing his knowledge about a specific subject at work, he can help his team members work better in that aspect. Feedback, likewise, should be encouraged in a fruitful yet gentle manner.
Efficiency Is Not Just About Technology
Communication in an IT setting can often be considered a soft skill that does not need many documents. However, in reality, bad communication and conduct can lead to long-term damage within the team. Clear communication among the team members helps in cutting costs, reducing bugs and errors, and promoting development in areas as necessary.
While both IT tools and talents are useful to build a successful team, it is not adequate. And, a good open communication culture is not just a way to feel good about your team members and yourself, but also a way you can gain a competitive edge. When communication flows freely, goals align more quickly, problems are resolved faster, and your team’s full potential is finally fulfilled.
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