The role of a bridge between business personnel and technical personnel

On qcon, I chatted with a friend about my current situation.

I am now responsible for communicating with the business, and then providing one-stop services, from business rule formulation to demand analysis, design, development, testing, and post-maintenance, everything is done by yourself. Of course, this is only for a department. after a certain amount of time, the business process and system process have been well met. Even if the demand changes, the changes will be completed within a short period of time, in addition, we have established sufficient trust relationships with our colleagues in the business department. In the event of a conflict, we can also understand each other and discuss and resolve the issue.

However, you are still in the role of a technician rather than a management role, and you are also in a business company (not a software company) as a management role, it will not be the technical management of software companies, but more will participate in some administrative affairs, which is not very consistent with their own personality, so they do not want to do that kind of work.

However, the current practice can only serve one department. If you serve multiple departments, you need more energy and time. After all, in the current work process, communication is a very important part and takes a lot of time. In addition, if you have an administrative position, it may be difficult to maintain such a good relationship with colleagues in the business department.

As a result, a friend gives a suggestion about whether to act as a coach in Agile development and serve as a bridge between business personnel and technical personnel, without being involved in all kinds of substantive administrative work, we can provide suggestions and guidance to colleagues in business and technical departments from the perspective of onlookers.

This role is indeed very attractive. I think it can be:

1. Adjust the relationship between business departments and developers
2. Improve communication between each other
3. Avoid mutual promotion or ball kicking.
4. Can avoid waste and achieve lean results
5. Early Assessment and adequate preparation when demand changes occur to better respond

And so on.

At the same time, the requirements for such roles will be relatively high:

• Sufficient technical knowledge
• Have sufficient business knowledge
• Good communication skills and good relationship with both parties
• Ability to have a degree of integrity, do not participate in the actual work too much
• Good understanding and analysis skills, able to quickly locate and solve problems in a timely manner

In this way, many aspects are actually soft capabilities. For this role, compared with hard capabilities, soft capabilities are more important.

For the time being, this is just an immature idea. After all, it takes a long time to integrate this role into the company's organizational structure, and how to make managers recognize it is also necessary, it is also a problem to be studied to effectively evaluate and check the work it has done.