When collaboration fails, productivity collapses. How can you improve this crucial facet with your teams?
Your business works and grows thanks to teams. You may have hired a superstar developer, but even engineers working at unprecedented levels of productivity can't accomplish what a well-functioning team can.
But that's the key. To perform well, a team must work together. In other words, they must be able to collaborate. When a team cannot collaborate, it fails. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that you and your company encourage collaboration between the development teams that work tirelessly to keep your company running.
And no matter what type of developer you're working with (be they Java, JavaScript, C++, Python, offshore or nearshore), everyone needs to keep their collaboration skills in tip-top shape.
So what can you do to help with this?
Here are some tips that can help your teams collaborate more productively and seamlessly.
Set clear collaboration guidelines
This should be the first thing you do when trying to improve your team collaboration. Things can be a little chaotic at the moment, with developers doing things in multiple ways and without guidance. Such chaos does not lend itself to efficient collaboration.
Instead, you want to set very clear guidelines for collaboration. You will want to answer questions such as:
- What tools will you use?
- How should developers document their code and processes?
- Should your teams use specific channels with communication platforms?
- Will all communications be recorded?
- What roles will the designated teams have and will each team have a leader responsible for communication across the chain?
- What types of information can be shared outside the team?
It is absolutely crucial that you create these guidelines and have them available for anyone to read at any time. It is also important that you update these guidelines and, when you make any changes, immediately inform everyone of these changes. Additionally, make sure all members of each team approve the guidelines so they are aware of what they are.
Employ the right tools
It has become a huge challenge for teams to collaborate without the right tools. This is especially true when you have some teams working in-house and others remote. But even if they are all internal, you need to employ the appropriate tools to assist in the collaboration process.
Some of the best tools you can use are Slack, Google Workspaces, Office 365, Trello, Asana, Nextcloud (or ownCloud), Dropbox, Git, and GitHub. You'll want to have a collaboration tool for communication, file sharing, code repositories, version control, and even collaborative IDEs.
Create a conducive environment
If you haven't created an environment conducive to collaboration, your efforts will stall no matter what you do to encourage your teams. You must foster an environment that helps build teamwork and shares responsibility and success. You want an environment where people not only want to work, but want to work together.
This means you must start with a foundation of trust. Your developers not only need to trust each other, but also their ability to keep things running smoothly. Only after creating this environment can collaboration move to the next level.
Offer multiple means of communication
In addition to the chosen tools, you must make several means of communication available to your teams. This means you should encourage the use of email, phone, face-to-face, and video communication, as well as embracing Slack and similar platforms.
Take it a step further and dedicate a meeting room for your teams that can be used for collaborative purposes. You should only use that room for that and you should make the teams feel comfortable using it. Don't feel like you need to cater to every whim and furnish the room to meet very specific needs. However, if your team decides to make the room their own, encourage them.
Hold regular collaborative meetings
This is a tricky proposition because regular meetings can really kill productivity. Don't be fooled into thinking that someone enjoys attending meetings. They do not. Even so, you should consider holding monthly or bi-weekly collaborative meetings with your teams. Make sure these meetings are fun and focused solely on ways to improve collaboration.
Don't make these meetings about business and don't have management present. Let these meetings be limited to those in charge of the collaborative process and no one else.
Encourage honest and open communication
It's important that your developers understand that you want honest and open communication to be a central part of the collaborative process. If you encourage this from the beginning, you will find that team members will be more willing to communicate their ideas and concerns.
To encourage this, you must help your teams understand that there are no bad ideas and that constructive criticism is the best way to help achieve team goals and improve the process.
At the same time, you need to avoid overly negative and harmful communications. If you feel this happening, stop immediately or it will cause more damage than you think.
Encourage creativity
Finally, you must encourage creativity. Often, team members feel as if their creativity is stifled instead of simply getting the job done. Developers love finding creative solutions. Leave them. Encourage them.
When your teams know they can truly unleash their creativity, you'll find their collaboration grows exponentially. One creative idea will blossom into another until you find that all teams are excited about what they are doing and ideas flow like water.
Conclusion
Encouraging better collaboration is not as challenging as you think. With just a little upfront work and some ongoing involvement, your development teams will see their collaboration and productivity skyrocket.
Source: BairesDev
