After 20 years of working as an outsourced software development partner, we tend to inherently accept that software development is a global born business. We automatically speak and think English or German and sometimes we forget the challenges of cross-cultural and social communication. Most of us at Codespring are bilingual and for sure, this affects the way we think and perceive verbal and written communication.

Great Communication is the Key to Long Term Software Development Partnerships

In Romania, as well as anywhere around the world where software is developed, we have this saying that when two parts communicate well from the start, the work will run smoothly and the differences of opinion will be easily reunited or accepted.

For that, we constantly strive to improve our software development team communication skills. On the communications radar we must keep the project team, the customer team and any other required third party for the software development project.

What Do We Communicate Across the Software Development Process?

We find it very useful to establish what needs to be communicated across the entire software development process. Sometimes it may seem implicit or understood, but the clearer we are one to each other the better the results. Therefore, let’s count the things we communicate during a software development process:

• The purpose of the project
• The target users of the intended software solution or product
• The expected use of the resulting software solution or product
• The knowledge all parties have in relation to the desired outcome
• The intended dead-lines
• The responsibilities of each party in the software development process
• The language, the means and the expected frequency of communication
• The progress of the agreed work and the intermediate results
• Team cooperation evaluation
• New ideas and opportunities during the solution development
• Obstacles faced during the software development process and potential solutions
• Testing results
• Ready-to-market essentials
• After-launch observations
• Solution improvement and upgrading possibilities

There are multiple roles within involved teams, that can observe and enhance a better communication, but it is also a matter of personalities and human interaction.

Here at Codespring, we test and evaluate our communication skills with regularity. As one of the key functions of our HR department is to keep us alert on this topic and organize communication workshops, as our last session is the beautiful country side of Transylvania, in Stana village.