The tech industry tends to attract highly-intelligent, super-focused individuals who are independent workers and deep thinkers. Although this is beneficial in many respects, communication challenges can arise. Prior to the rise of agile development methodologies, a collaborative and communicative team approach was fairly uncommon in the techsphere. This means that many companies lack well-established communication protocols and tools, while many non-Millennial techies require training to develop the strong communication skills that are so essential in today’s tech industry.

The Cost of Poor Communication Amongst Developers and Others in the Tech Industry

Poor communication can be very costly. One study examined 400 large enterprises with 100,000 employees or more. Average annual losses totaled $62.4 million dollars per company, for a total combined loss of approximately $37 billion. Researchers also found that smaller businesses, companies with an average of 100 employees, sustained an annual loss of $420,000.

Another study estimated cumulative per-worker productivity losses at $26,041 all resulting from communication barriers and poor communication practices.

Poor communication can lead to other problems, too, including:

• Delays and setbacks;
• Poor productivity levels;
• Frustration and poor morale; and
• Errors, omissions and mistakes.

On the flip side, companies with highly communicative company leaders saw returns totaling 47 percent higher over a five-year period when compared to firms where communication is not emphasized. But how do you implement measures that will actually improve your software development team’s communication plan? A two-pronged approach tends to be the most effective at providing tech talent with the tools and the skills that they need to succeed.

Prong 1: Tools and Opportunities to Promote Better Communication Amongst Team Members

Strong interpersonal communication won’t just happen spontaneously. You need to provide the tools that your software developers need to connect and collaborate in an intuitive, productive way.

Agile project management software: Developer-specific project management software like Jira can go a long way toward facilitating stronger communication amongst the members of your development team. You’ll have a portal that promotes communication surrounding workflow, whether it’s coding and development with the portals BitBucket add-on, or continuous integration-related communications with Jira’s Bamboo integration. Stronger communication tends to be a natural byproduct if developers are made aware of what others are doing at particular point in time.

Company-wide messaging tools: Messaging tools can be very useful in allowing for stronger communication, whether your development team is on opposite ends of the office or opposite sides of the planet. However, these tools are only effective if everyone uses the same one. So choose a messaging system to serve as your company’s default. Look for an interface that can be used on all devices and offers a full range of features, such as chat groups, voice calling and video chatting. Offering a few different tools within a single interface can be useful, as this provides your team with an opportunity to pick the communication method that feels most intuitive in a particular situation.

Daily morning meetings: The tradition known as the daily morning meeting has long-been practiced in the sales industry, in newsrooms and in a variety of other business niches. But only recently have tech companies started hosting morning meetings. It’s a tradition that has emerged alongside agile, team-based development methodologies. Morning meetings can serve as a wonderful team-building opportunity, allowing for updates and promoting a higher level of communicativeness.

Prong 2: Promoting Stronger Communication Skills in Your Tech Team

The right communication tools and opportunities are absolutely useless if nobody uses them! This is where interpersonal communication comes into play.

An introvert is apt to look within himself in situations where a more extroverted peer might look outward to others. For instance, when an introvert stumbles upon a question, he seeks the answer on his own, whereas an extrovert asks a coworker.

The tech field tends to attract highly intelligent, logical, analytical introverts. As such, this industry is one where you’re more apt to encounter individuals who lack a highly refined communication skill set. Of course, there is a broad spectrum. While a small number of individuals may truly struggle to communicate, most tend to be more solitary because a highly communicative approach just doesn’t feel natural or comfortable.

Since the technology field tends to have a higher proportion of introverts and lone wolves, companies can really benefit from implementing strategies designed to grow and develop an individual’s communication skills.

Convey the importance of strong communication: Techies tend to examine problems in a very logical, practical and methodical way. Use this to your advantage and make it clear precisely why communication is so important. Take a problem solution approach as you explain the role of communications. Explain the challenge that you’re seeking to overcome and then discuss how better communication should help you to overcome the challenge. This also provides the team with an opportunity to start developing their own unique solutions to the problems that result from poor communication.

Workshops to grow communication skills: A natural introvert or “lone wolf” may simply lack the skills required to communicate in a fast, efficient way. So invest in workshops designed to teach these skills in a fun, engaging way. The best workshops will also create a sense of unity, which is also key to the success of your software development team. In fact, that leads us into our final point…

Team-building exercises: As humans, we tend to be more communicative when we feel like we’re part of a team. This requires a sense of unity and belonging. Therefore, it’s critical that your developers feel as though they’re working with others to achieve something greater. This is where it can be useful to invest in team-building workshops and even retreats that are designed to help form stronger bonds.

Establishing Communication Protocols for Developers

Once you’ve provided the tools and opportunities, company leaders should work with supervisors and team leaders to get a sense for what best practices should be implemented as part of a larger software development communication policy.

Your communication protocols should address a number of different areas, including:

• What tools and platforms will be used to communicate;
• When to use a particular communication tool;
• Precise situations that should prompt specific forms of communication; and
• Who should be involved or cc’d in specific communications.

Each development team is comprised of unique individuals with some equally unique dynamics. So it’s wise to afford your team some control over precisely how they connect and collaborate. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and what works for one team may be woefully ineffective for another team. For this reason, it can be very beneficial to actively involve your software development staff as you develop new protocols.

Also remember that your development team will evolve over time, as will the technology that you use on a daily basis. Therefore, it’s essential that you revisit your protocols periodically to maintain maximum efficiency and productivity.

Many companies can also benefit from working with developers who serve as positive role models for their less communicative peers. At iTech, our well-established development teams have been dispatched to a vast range of different work environments. Strong communication is one of the keys to our success.

Through a unique tech and IT staffing practice known as insourcing, our talented teams are embedded in dozens of different companies. This experience has transformed our tech specialists and developers into strong communicators who routinely accomplish far more than the tech project that they were assigned to complete. It’s not uncommon for our clients to gain lots of useful insight into what it means to be an adept communicator and team player in today’s tech field. industry. If you need help with a development project and wish to learn more about insourcing, contact iTech today.

The post Two Ways to Improve Your Software Development Team’s Communication Plan first appeared on iTech.

In today’s competitive hiring environment, it’s easy for a company to make compromises when hiring a developer for a temporary project. In extreme cases, companies may end up vetting temporary software developer candidates based solely upon their availability.

Short-term compromises are common when hiring temporary staff, but in the long-run, these compromises can make it difficult to build a truly quality product. If you’re hiring for a temporary IT project, you’ll want to keep the following considerations in mind.

Permanent vs. Temporary IT Staff

On a permanent team, you want a blend of experienced IT staff and younger developers that can be molded into ideal, loyal senior developers. What you don’t want is to recruit temporary staff members that you will only need for a short time. Many companies hire temporary developers simply to mine the specific skills required to complete a single project. While temporary staff members offer a perspective that is broader than that held by your company’s permanent employees, they are not invested in the long term success of your company’s initiatives.

If you’re hiring for a one-time IT project (for example, an app) and need to hire temporary staff, you may lack the technical expertise required to effectively evaluate your candidates’ relevant capabilities. However, you should still be able to rely on a candidate’s portfolio. Any temporary developer worth their salt has a portfolio that accurately reflects their ability.

When evaluating a temporary candidate, skip the theory. Skip bulleted skills sections. And skip the Famo.us-style coding tests. Instead, ask to see and use an app (or two) that your candidate has built. This allows you to immediately gauge the candidate’s skills and expertise or lack thereof. Was using the app intuitive and easy? How fast did it load? Was the touch screen user-friendly and easy to navigate? Were the statements, wording, and messages simple and clearly communicated? Did the developer look at the interface in terms of accessibility and usability for all users?

The Value of Communication Skills in Developers

Most software developers aren’t known for their excellent people skills, however, while a permanent staff member doesn’t need to be particularly gregarious or charismatic in order to fit in at the company, they do need to be able to build rapport reasonably well in order to collaborate on the project. If a company doesn’t have dedicated IT staff on hand to liaise between the temporary developer and the rest of the company, then it should put extra emphasis on finding a temporary software developer with excellent communication skills.

Temporary developers must be active communicators and active listeners. It’s likely that these individuals will work more independently than many others at the company, so they must have the ability to keep fellow employees in the loop. Also, as experts, they need to know how to translate that knowledge in a simple, direct way, to communicate with less technical members of your company.

Most importantly, according to a study done in 2013 on soft skills and software development, 88% of job postings for software developers required excellent communication skills as part of their criteria. It’s commonly known that in order to be a good software developer, you need to understand the end user, and the human element of design. (At iTech, we understand this in other words we hire people who get people.)

Hiring a Temporary Software Development Team vs. Individual Developers

Effective development teams are shown to be more creative and more productive, but, when you are dealing with temporary projects and short-term relationships, the bond between team members may not be as strong. Despite your best efforts to build camaraderie, team chemistry is not something that can be developed in a short time.

You can, however, hire established teams instead of hiring multiple individual developers. A team that already works together already knows how to get along, how to delegate tasks, share input, and maximize productivity. Teams require less management and the refined team dynamics result in fewer interpersonal conflicts. This immediately translates into fewer headaches from a project management perspective. At iTech, we coordinate business and technical teams, in addition to fulfilling your needs for individual developers.

Don’t be intimidated by the current market demand for software developers. You don’t want to hire just any temporary software developer, you want to hire an excellent temporary software developer. Just as you don’t want to create just any product or mobile app; you want to create an excellent one. At iTech, we hire the best, work with the best, and retain the best employees from across the globe. Contact iTech to find out how we can help insource the top talent you need to build your next excellent product.

The post The Unwritten Rules of Hiring Temporary IT Staff: Software Developer Edition first appeared on iTech.