8 ways to communicate your ideas to your development team

57% of projects fail due to poor communication.

Poor communication is one of the major factors for project failure. To make a project successful, every team member should communicate with each other to be on the same page and build trust with each other. But teams that don’t communicate with each other will never be able to build trust and achieve anything. They will lack the ability to make rational decisions.

Poor communication builds tension in the workplace, creates conflicts in the workplace, thus preventing you from building a productive workplace. So, it is necessary to define the communication process and effectively communicate your ideas to your development team in order to avoid failure.

Effective Ways to Communicate Your Ideas to Your Development Team

Many risks can be avoided in advance if the right decisions are made at the right time. You can avoid the risks of poor communication if you clarify your ideas to your development team clearly. So, how do you communicate your ideas to your development team?

1. Explain About Your Company and Working Culture

It’s not a problem for your old employees, but to your new employees, you need to explain your company, working culture, business process, tools and methodologies used, and so on. This helps them to be comfortable and understand their roles and responsibilities clearly.

You need to onboard your new employees effectively. Not only new employees, but remote employees will also understand the company’s vision and goals and give their best to fulfill the company’s vision and goals.

2. Break Down the Project Into Small Segments

It is very difficult to understand everything about the projects and tasks at once. Some of the ideas, tasks, and processes you are explaining might go over the head making it difficult for your team to understand the project, the app and its requirements and functions, and their own roles and responsibilities.

The outcome you are trying to achieve might not come to your hand. So, it is important for you to break down your project into small segments so that your team will understand the project and accomplish what you want to achieve from them.

It is very tough to achieve everything that you wish for at once. It takes time to see the results. Likewise, it can be very tough for your development team to build software quickly. So, it is best to take it slow and complete one task at a time instead of completing the project quickly. Are you sure overworking and completing a project quickly will achieve quality and will work perfectly?

3. Explain About Requirements and Functions Clearly

Another effective way to explain your idea to your development team is to clarify the requirements of software and its functionalities. Before starting a project or before implementing any idea, every team member should be aware of the software requirements, needs of the customers. This way, your development team will have a better understanding of their roles and responsibilities.

Another thing you can do is, create a To-Do list to prioritize the tasks and complete the high-priority tasks first. You can use different online project management and collaboration tools to manage your tasks and projects like Trello, Asana, Jira, and so on. With the help of these tools, collaboration has never been easier than before.

4. Create Flowcharts

Flowcharts help your development team to understand the workflow and the process of the software. Moreover, your development team will understand it more easily and clearly than a complex algorithm.

The flowcharts show how each task needs to be done and show how the software performs its functions. It is your duty to make your development team understand the software working process to make the development process as simple as possible. It is your duty to make your development team understand the interrelationships between the steps and understand how a process starts and finishes.

A complex algorithm or a diagram using simple boxes and symbols to understand the workflow?

5. Use User Stories

Source

User stories are a common tool used by a tech company to help their development team understand the needs of the software users. It is an informal way to describe the features of the software. Ex: As a business user, I should be able to view the survey.

It is so easy to understand that it helps you to communicate your idea to your development team easily. They can easily communicate and understand each function of the software. They will understand which functions to include in the software and which not.

6. Create Visual Mockups

Your development team will understand clearly what you are trying to convey if you create visual mockups. They will understand more clearly than simply creating algorithms. You can simply design the app on paper or on a whiteboard. Just design a container and inside that container create boxes including text representing logo, header, images, slider, and so on.

Your development team will clearly understand where to put what elements, where to add content, where to put sign-up forms, and many more. You can also use tools like Adobe XD, Mockplus, Moqups, and many more to create visual mockups, wireframes, designs, etc.

Visual designs are more impactful than word of mouth.

7. Specify Deadlines and Budget

You need to specify the deadline and budget of the project to your development team so that they can focus on the project and give their best effort to complete the project. You can also ask the deadline for the project with your development team to receive some suggestions from them. This way your development team won’t have any workload pressure and focus on the project.

Your development team is the one that will be working on your idea, so it’s best to specify whether the deadline is within reach or not. The budget also matters. It’s best to avoid unnecessary tasks and features from the project to save time, effort, money, and other resources.

8. Feedback Session

At the end of the meeting, ask for any feedback from your development team. Your development team will suggest to you if your idea needs some improvement or if some features need to be added or removed, and so on.

Having a feedback session will help to know whether your development team clearly understood your idea, their roles and responsibilities, the project, and so on or not. It is better to clear misunderstandings beforehand than to waste unnecessary time, effort, money, and other resources later.

In Conclusion

Your development team is the one that will be working to make your idea into reality. So, it is important and best for you to communicate your idea to your development team and clear any misunderstandings and risks before implementing your idea.

You need to communicate with your development team to have a clear understanding of your ideas and start implementing them to make your idea successful. Doing this will help you to manage your team as well.

This post was also published on Truemark.