At WEZOM, we regularly become a technology partner for startups and businesses of various sizes and often face situations where, despite a clear business goal, they do not have a verified approach to interacting with tech specialists. Moreover, this is a typical case even for the clients who have an in-house IT team. At the same time, the lack of well-established and transparent communication often becomes an extremely expensive bottleneck in IT projects, both in terms of time and budget. That’s why we decided to dedicate this article to recommendations on how to work with the dev team.
Tip 1 – Establish Clear Communication Channels
In a project team, a misunderstanding of tasks or overlooked comments can result in weeks of overtime. Therefore, the first thing we do at the start of each project is to define primary and secondary communication channels.
In particular, for reducing miscommunication, we use instant messengers like Slack or Telegram, for planning and tracking tasks – Jira, ClickUp, or YouTrack, and for online meetings – Zoom or Google Meet. All these aspects are discussed with the client in advance, in particular, including determining the remote dev team collaboration tools where bugs are pointed out, where the design is approved, where tasks are assigned, and where the stakeholder alignment of the strategy takes place.
At the same time, it is important to maintain a balance when managing remote developers – when they communicate with each other in a disjointed manner, using 5-8 different tools, information can be duplicated, lost, or become irrelevant. Therefore, we always limit ourselves to 2-3 tools only.
Tip 2 – Align on Goals and Priorities
One of the most critical problems in project communication is when the team works without a clear understanding of what and why. At some point, it may turn out that the goals have changed, and the team has to start all over again. This, in turn, can demotivate them, slow down sprints, and, generally, negatively affect the results of work.
To avoid this, we implement weekly goal synchronization. It can be short, but still mandatory, and consists of describing priorities, as well as defining the 2-3 most important tasks and 2-3 that can be postponed for later.
As for the format, this can be a meeting in Zoom, a board in ClickUp, or just a pinned message in the general chat in Slack. The main thing is to achieve a common understanding of priorities among all team members, including those who work remotely.
Tip 3 – Give Actionable Feedback and Recognize Wins
Feedback for us is not just about checking the work done or leaving comments. Proper communication can make it a bridge to trust between team members, increasing the quality of the product and boosting the dev team productivity.
In particular, we always leave detailed feedback with an objective assessment. For example, if the team lead does not like the approach to writing the code, he or she will not just write “this is bad” but will offer options on how to do it better (often with examples). Moreover, we have already implemented code review and design feedback templates to avoid subjectivity.
After all, even a banal “thank you for the quick fix” makes the team stronger, especially when some of its members cannot receive non-verbal approval of their actions just because they work remotely.
Tip 4 – Foster Ownership and Accountability
You don’t pull up the shoots to help them grow, right? In the same way, in teamwork, we try to give freedom to each specialist, without resorting to total micromanagement. Otherwise, the team stops thinking independently and begins to be afraid of doing something at the wrong time and in the wrong way, rather than creating a high-quality product.
In particular, at WEZOM, we adhere to the approach: “assign not a task, but a result”. Considering the example of creating a button, this does not sound like “make a button” but “make so that the user can complete the payment process in two clicks”. Trust and control are not mutually exclusive concepts: we maintain control through metrics, while allowing specialists to do their work as they see fit, of course, within the framework of their competencies and responsibilities.
Thus, the team plans how to complete the task independently, while the manager takes on the result assessment only. These agile communication practices not only maintain the team’s motivation throughout the project but ultimately increase the speed and quality of decisions.
Tip 5 – Encourage Cross-Functional Communication
An unfavorable situation in terms of the result is when the product is built in “pieces” and only at the end, the team assembles them together. With this approach, everyone solves their own problem, but no one perceives the product as a whole.
In turn, at WEZOM, we build cross-functional teams (where each specialist understands shared project goals and therefore can fully participate in decision-making), and also organize joint planning meetings and general chats. This allows us to avoid problems like “designers have one approach, developers have another, while the PM has no idea what’s going on” and ensure timely progress on the project with expected deliverables until it is ready.
Moreover, this approach can inconspicuously eliminate competition between project participants, because everyone will be passionate about a single goal.
Tools That Make Collaboration Smoother
Although collaboration tools (Slack, Jira, GitHub) do not directly affect the quality of the product, you should still have a minimum stack with several variations to ensure convenient and productive interaction between all team members. For example, here are the ones that help us improve dev team communication.
- Slack. Slack is a perfectly structured business messenger with support for separate channels, a number of integrations (in particular with Jira, GitHub, and Google Drive), and instant notifications. Here, you can create channels by topic and mention specific people. We use Slack as a hub for real-time communication, where all the most important things are consolidated.
- Jira/ClickUp/YouTrack. All these tools are aimed at centralized task management. Here, you can create new tasks, add descriptions, attachments, and checklists to them, mark statuses, link them to other tasks, and much more, which allows you to eliminate chaos at all stages of work on a project.
- Notion. This is an effective solution for maintaining project documentation. In particular, in it, we describe business logic, create a glossary, maintain a changelog, and record decisions. Notion also stores the project structure, stages of work on it, and answers to frequently asked questions.
- Figma. Initially created for designers, today, this tool is user-friendly enough for other team members as well. In it, users can view layouts, leave comments, and generally obtain an understanding of how the product will look. It also allows you to compare versions, check adaptability, and get instant access to CSS/props/indents. Finally, Figma enables linking all discussions with tasks in Jira and chats in Slack.
- Zoom/Google Meet. Although we do not abuse video calls, they also have a right to exist throughout the project. Specifically, we use these tools in sprint planning communication, as well as to demonstrate ready-made functionality and coordinate architecture, integrations, and changes. They also help us clarify subtle points that are difficult to describe in words in a Jira task.
- GitHub/GitLab Issues. When a project is at the active development stage, these platforms allow us to find out which developers wrote what and when, which branches and pull requests are currently under review, and what is related to which task in Jira.
- Trello/Miro. Finally, we use these tools to visualize processes, which is critical for projects with flow charts describing specific user scenarios, as well as for those whose owners do not have a technical background, and it is easier for them to convey what we are doing through visuals.
Of course, you can choose your tools based on your own experience and binding to specific software vendors, the main thing is to agree on a list of those that can cope with the tasks described above.
Conclusion
We are convinced that no matter what the tech stack, the project’s success still largely depends on effective development team collaboration. Indeed, such communication ensures software project transparency, clarity, and adherence to deadlines, as well as quick conflict resolution. If you are looking for a technical partner who can not only code but also follow all aforementioned software team collaboration tips, we are ready to help – just write or call us.
