Soft power of software developers: communication and collaboration

Collaboration is required everywhere in our work, and collaboration must be communicated. We all know the importance of communication and collaboration. I will not go into details here, but I will go into the topic directly. I will introduce several common problems and solutions in the Process of teamwork and communication.

 

How to bring new people

The boss cannot make a team skilled and expert. This is a high cost, and these mature hands have almost the same qualifications. Together, they are a very powerful team, but once they collapse, they are also quite fast, this will have a great impact on the normal operation of the company.

Therefore, we will expand the number of new graduates every year to show the team a step by step. This is also easy to manage. Imagine that if hula suddenly flood into a large number of new graduates, everyone will have a job of almost the same salary at the beginning, but after a year, there will certainly be some people going up, some people moving on. In enterprises, especially outstanding people who are very convinced, such people are relatively rare. Most people are almost competent. Some may be more careful, harder, and more responsible, so they went up. However, in the past, when people came together at the same level, they complained: "He de can be higher than our salary and take care of us? It must be the appetite of the leaders ". There are a lot of rumors, and work is naturally difficult to carry out.

Therefore, I suggest you step up your age and qualifications during recruitment. Do not enter too many new people, or do not concentrate on the same department, or the hidden crisis is great. Business expansion is too fast, and you have to grasp the pace, a small number of new recruits. After the step-by-step development, the old man and new people will continue to run the business.

The newcomers are here. We are guided by the master system. The master is not a job and is not linked to salary. It may not always be the master who leads the new employee. This principle must be clarified in advance with the employees who are about to become masters. Otherwise, the employee thinks that he has become a group leader.

The master shall be responsible for the work arrangement, study, code check, and development framework for newcomers during the trial period, as well as the company's administrative, personnel, finance, and other rules and regulations, corporate culture, and precautions, and the evaluation of new users at the end of the trial period.

A new employee is coming to a strange new environment. What is the enterprise actually like, how it works, how it quickly integrates into the current work content, and how it quickly integrates with existing teams, the Human Resources Department cannot be so in-depth and meticulous. Every company has a wall-mounted system and hidden rules in daily behavior. A new employee will not feel lonely, but can quickly integrate into the company. Without the help of masters, new people will naturally assemble into a group. Every time new people enter a group, the company will become a group of interest groups.

 

How to deal with experts

This is also a common problem. A team will certainly have one or several outstanding technical experts responsible for the core coding of software development. The most common problem is that experts feel that they are ready and indispensable because of their strong qualifications and abilities. Therefore, they are grumpy, arrogant, reprimand, and laugh at other team members. However, we absolutely cannot indulge in this situation. Because everyone is working in a team, and everyone is an employee, why should we listen to what you call the "big bull, five, five drinks, six drinks? If the team lead closed his eyes with one eye and held his hand, every time the green light was given, and Daniel felt that he was expected, other employees would feel unfair. As a result, this supervisor does not even have a supporter.

Whether someone asks me how to manage the big cows that are already cool, or how to get rid of the big cows who hold the core all day long, I want to say one way: division of labor.

Who will design the functions of a software development? Who is responsible for the Plan, allocation, promotion, exception resolution, and report of the entire process? Who will design the database? Who will do the uidesign? Who guarantees the quality? Who will do the document ?...... As long as the entire software production chain is divided into several links (of course, the number of steps required depends on the number of people at hand and the ability of people), each person is responsible for one of his own links, if the project manager plans and promotes the project manager, each stage is an essential part of success, but it will not become a stage of life and death.

In this way, you can become a team. Just like a csgame, some people provide cover, some charge, some people throw thunder, and some people guard. This is where the team came from.

 

How to communicate with the upper layer

It is not difficult to communicate with the upper layer. The difficulty is that if the upper-layer is the boss, it is more difficult. If the upper layer is also a professional manager, everyone is working, and the boss is a company employee. There is not much problem with such communication. The biggest headache for everyone is communication with the boss, and the boss is likely to be your direct superior, however, based on many factors such as customers, sales, wages, company cash flow pressure, "Pie drawing", morale, and the boss's own small abacus, the boss will not be fully held out. Of course, the boss decides to keep a person, his job is promoted and his salary is increased and downgraded, and the employee is not sure how to communicate with the boss smoothly. As a result, it became a required course. Some people still don't realize well. They can't observe it, but cannot figure out what the boss really wants. Then the work will be passive.

This is the biggest problem for managers who have been promoted to management positions by many technical backgrounds. I am not doing very well either. But I have a few insights to share with you:

1. The boss is also a person. Everyone must understand this mentality. The boss is not brave. He also has many inaccurate judgments. He also has his children, wife, father, and mother. He also worked from college, and he is also chatting about QQ movies, it just won't let you see it. If you can put your mind in this way, you can better understand each other. Some people don't know where to put their hands when they see the boss. They are standing up and waiting for instructions with fear. This mentality is easy to reveal. Managers must show their skills when they are in distress. Now they are all sincere and fearful to their bosses. Should they be blank when an emergency occurs?

2. The boss is also suspicious and suspicious. First, let your mind drop down. Don't expect you to use it as needed. This expectation is too high. As the saying goes, qianjima often does not, but bole does not. In a company, even if you complain, but you have not resigned, you must have stayed for the reason. Now, you have to face it, accept it, and accept it if you don't accept it. Otherwise, you will leave. There may be too many places to go, and you will accept this as a reality, but we are unwilling to accept it. In this case, we should make a good plan, make a good report, work-on-duty report, and explain the ins and outs. The more you don't trust your boss, the less resources you get. The less resources you get, the more difficult you are to do things. Therefore, you must take the initiative to reassure the boss. The boss does not think it is the boss's business. It is your own business to write or not write. We all know about it.

3. Do not push the problem to the boss. The boss is not a fireman, but the boss. If someone asks you for a salary, you can solve the problem. Report the problem to the boss and wait for the boss to solve it. This is your capability problem. The correct method is to clarify the following details: the original principle of the incident; your worries; what kind of results may appear after your analysis, which is good for us, and how we do it, what resources are required and what other departments are required to work together? The boss wants to make decisions and reorganize resources, rather than thinking about how to solve the problem. Do not give questions to the boss.

How to coordinate pre-sales and after-sales activities

R & D and sales have been in conflict for a long time. Sales are often promised to sign orders. However, R & D is the Execution and Implementation Department. If you can't do anything, you can't just talk about it. What should I do?

In order to prevent the gap between pre-sales and after-sales personnel from being too large, R & D personnel must be involved in the documentary process.

R & D personnel generally participate in the following aspects before the sales:

1. Discuss customer requirements.

2. Customer solution-production of technical solutions, development workload, and development plan.

3. Customer software demonstration and Q & A discussion.

The personnel dispatched by the R & D department are generally project managers who will take over the development work of the project in the future. What do customers really want? What business problems are suitable for software solutions? What business problems can be solved in a better way? How long is the solution cycle? How big is complexity, difficulty, cost, and manpower?

Only when the business manager and the Project Development Manager participate from start to end can both parties reach an agreement to assess the real difficulty, cycle, and labor required for the project. The final quotation is based on this comprehensive consideration.

The after-sales department generally complains about how the software is so difficult to use and how many bugs exist. Therefore, the R & D department has two roles to support the after-sales department. One is testing and technical support, and the other is a documenter.

The reason is that the version is being upgraded. The features of the version come from many departments, customers, customer service support, sales, and even bosses. Why is this function designed in this way to meet who needs it? More features, more versions, and even the after-sales Implementation Department are unclear.

Who can have a deep understanding of the existing software version, it must be from the R & D department. The R & D department generally does not want to disrupt the development process of programmers, and the thinking style and implementers of programmers are quite different. Therefore, the R & D department sends document personnel to train new functions of each version after each version is released. In addition, software documents are not practical and easy to understand. This step will be tested. Therefore, it is best for the document staff of the R & D department to perform internal promotion and training for the new version. On the one hand, it verifies the quality and level of the document, on the other hand, it can deepen the understanding of product details, and thus write more practical documents.

The same is true for technical support. The General Service Department cannot solve the problem, which is a deep-seated technical problem and needs to turn to the developer for help. This will also disturb the normal planning process of development. Then the tester will serve as technical support. On the one hand, the tester is familiar with many nuances of the product for deep testing, and solves the problem quickly. On the other hand, problems are exposed in the implementation or customer use phase, indicating that the test was not strict at the beginning. Why is this happening? The tester will also be reflected upon the support, to facilitate subsequent professional tests.

How to communicate with customers

Customers are usually business personnel who do not understand IT or the cost of solving problems. He only wants to finish his work, but he does not want to know the rest. He does not understand the explanations you give him, but urges you to finish it quickly. In this situation, how can we do a good job of communication?

We still need a dedicated project manager to solve this problem. At the project kickoff meeting, the project manager should explain the project's objectives, cycle, difficulties, our work methods, the cooperation roles of both parties, and the risks that may occur easily. This gives the customer an expectation. It turns out that the software is not so easy to use after installation, so there are so many complicated and hard work to do. In addition, everyone has a consensus on how to work. If you use the same method, you will not see chicken or duck.

In this basic consensus, the weekly work plan is refined to every half day and implemented to everyone, including the responsibilities and affairs of everyone on the customer side. Daily report, weekly summary and inspection, fine-tuning, and next week plan.

We will keep the meeting minutes for each meeting. What is the subject of the meeting and who are participants? What are the opinions of each person on each topic, and what are the results of the discussion? This should be noted down, otherwise it is very easy to show things that do not count, forget not to mention.

With so many process documents, we need to send a group of emails to all individuals in the project team in a timely manner, especially the owners of both parties. Projects are often called top projects. Without the support of the largest leader, various internal business departments of the customers involved in the project fought against each other, these problems often affect false business functions, cannot be launched after the software is not modified, the software process is not completely changed to a strange one, and repeated training is not a problem.

Although there are many exceptions and bumps in every project, everyone has come all the way and understood all the ins and outs. Everyone knows that they have done their best. This is OK.

In this article, I am only focusing on the R & D department. I have introduced the collaboration methods with internal personnel, the boss, sales personnel, after-sales personnel, and various stakeholders of the customer. In fact, there is a whole set of methodology for organizational structure, division of functions, process management, and assessment and supervision. Limited space can only be clicked here. For details, see "getting out of software Workshop".

Author profile:

Ah Zhu, his name is Lu Jianwei. Author of "coming out of software Workshop. Over 10 years of business software experience, over 10 years of focus on the industry management information field, 7 years of professional manager career, he has many years of experience in business analysis, product system planning, R & D talent System Establishment, R & D process management, technical architecture, pre-sales, R & D, and after-sales.

(This article is from programmer magazine 10-01)