# Communication

What

• The aim is:

  • What you want to say ends up being what they understand

• But due to the multiple paths (in control and out of control), the message gets lost, misunderstood

  • what you want to say/write -> what you say/write -> what they hear/read -> what they understood

Why

• This is vital in the world of software development

• A necessary skill to get good at especially if you want to:

  • Get promoted (either technical like senior/principal, or managementblah.txt lead)

  • Be seen (Giving talks, blogging)

  • Helping other (mentoring, onboarding)

  • start up (advertising, sales, hiring)

  • Writing software (readable code, clean code)

  • influencing others

  • Networking

  • Looking for new job

  • Meetings

  • estimations

  • Defining scope (discusisng with stakeholders)

  • Writign documentation and comments

  • Bring out responses from others

  • Code reviews

  • Build relationships

Issues

• What you think/believe they know or understand is different to what you know or understand

Tips

• Understanding the Audience: Tailoring technical details based on the listener’s background helps bridge communication gaps, especially with non-technical teams.

  • what they know

  • what they want

  • How technical to go into

• Watch out for slang, acronyms, technical, domain terms

• Use questions, to clarify, repeat

• Repeat, and repeat in different mediums

• Ensure that you are talking about the same thing with same meaning

• Ask them to ask questions

• Use different ways and mediums ie ananlogies, pictures, charts, exampels etc

• Be clear with your words

  • written word should be easy to scan, use formatting, no wall of text

• add humour, smile and caring (remember what they said and ask about it, use name), thank them

• Never send a single hello, write everything first

• To get response

  • target your messages

    • if dont know,take a best guess and ask if they know someone who can help

  • explain why you need something

  • explain why you need it (ie deadliens etc)

• Answering questions

  • give the responses you want to get

    • if you dont know give them a contact or ask that contact

  • If you dont have time, say so, give them an expectation to when you can do it

  • if it takes time, tell them

• AVoid long messages (or threads) instead do a call

  • Avoid calling straight away, write summary first

Links

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVRbxVCHrPE Communication for Developers: estimates, code reviews, and other hard problems by Voytek Pituła