“Why won’t my developers work with me?” Asked Padma who was in the audience from a virtual presentation to an IIBA Chapter. “I wish I had a quick answer, Padma. Let me ask you a few questions first.” I responded.

Padma’s question is quite common. I have presented Humans are Hard, Code is Easy to multiple IIBA Chapters. Let’s recap the questions I asked her and a few options you can consider.

5 Questions for Clarity

1. What is your current state? Find out what is happening now. Try to understand what they are seeing.

2. Define what working together means to you. Give them details of your expectations. Perhaps they want the developer to tell them everything. If they are quiet this can be challenging.

3. What are the roadblocks you are experiencing? Are there organizational issues in place? For instance, how the team is organized may limit our influence.

4. What can you control? Focus on what levers you have. If there are things outside of your control don’t spend too much time on them. Where do you have agency? Understand your sphere of influence.

5. How can you iterate to a solution? Learn from our agile friends. Find ways to make small experiments. Gain feedback. Adjust your approach. Small hinges swing big doors.

4 Options for better collaboration

Train

Collaboration is a bit squishy. Like Justice Potter Stewart’s quote about pornography, “I know it when I see it.” Train your team in the basics of collaboration.

Model the behavior you want. This will give everyone an example of what collaboration looks like.

Keep curious. Ask the team members how they would handle things. Get them to share.

Foster group problem-solving. Instill in them the best way forward is together. No lone wolf approaches.

Access

To work well together everyone needs access to the information. On one team only the Business Analyst could talk to the stakeholder. The developers had to communicate through her.

This limited the developers' access and information. The free flow of information to the team is critical to their success. This is the lifeblood for meeting goals.

Check-In

Having been a leader in the past, you can believe things are going well. Until you begin asking a few questions. Dig in and see how the collaboration is going.

As a developer, I know we can be hard to work with. We may not always communicate clearly. Therefore, Business Analysts might think we are mad. In reality, we can be introverted.

Communicate

Collaboration doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Two or more people need to work together. Along with the previous point, we need to communicate our intent. “I plan on completing this requirement by the end of the day.”

If that plan changes we need to let everyone know. In our remote world, some people call this “Working out Loud”. For instance, we post in Slack or Teams and note this in Jira. Make sure people know what you are working on.

Achieving alignment can be hard work. Building cohesion on the team is worth it. Be clear and direct with them.