Improve Communication Between Cross Functional Team

Posted By : Anjali Pandey | 29-Jan-2019

Cause: Sometimes we are not able to deliver our product on time or not delivered a quality product to end user, most of the time the main reason behind it is a communication gap between testers, requirements specialists and developers which impacted the schedule, budget, and timeline. The problem is systemic and this difference is due to the culture of having different functional teams, which leads to a lack of effective communication. below are a few solutions which can minimize this gap.

 

1 Adopt an Agile framework like Scrum: The SCRAM has a framework that enables developers, testers, needs to communicate naturally to analysts and other members of the team. The reason for the waterproof style of contrary to projects, there are cross-functional teams in the scram, which is a common goal. Work in increments increase and this daily stand-up meeting reminds everyone about their general goal.

 

2. Form teams around products: Instead of forming teams around the master schedule, if you make a team based on the expertise required to create a product, communication may be helpful or. To create a software product, you will obviously need a developer, a tester, a need analyzer. You may also need the database administrator and system administrator to manage the deployment. All of these people can be part of the same team while working on the same goal. This model will encourage more open communication among team members with various members.

 

3. Embrace cross-functional team culture: If you are a test manager, then you need to encourage your testers to go beyond the testing so that they learn how to collect codes or learn a bit about the requirements. Of course, testing will be their primary skill, but while working with developers, it does not hurt to gather some needs or to change some cosmetic codes to help the analysts. In turn, it makes the testers comfortable to speak the language of the developers, and the developers speak the language of testers and similarly.

 

4. Cut down on useless formal meetings: One way to break cross-domain communication is to have a lot of meetings for everyone's presence. Many unnecessary meetings usually take away the criticism of meetings, resulting in zombie communication without any enthusiasm. Cut down non-critical meetings, and only leave those who bring the highest value. Communication in remaining meetings will be more meaningful.

 

5. Empower your subordinates: Managers need to avoid command and control work style. Beyond a certain level, monetary incentive is not important for employees. What matters for them is to find an objective in their work. 

 

6. Swarm around problems to solve them: Spinning ball on the wall while solving the project problem does not help much. It is important to establish a culture of herd collectively around a problem. Keep a conference room organized for teams to move together and speed up the cross-team communication cycle. To solve problems, there is a significant waste of time and resources by relying on email. If necessary for troubleshooting, all team managers should make an agreement to provide resources from their respective areas.

 

7. Call out people who play the blame game: There will always be people who will play guilt games. If you see someone doing this, then politely call them out. The faulty game is a common occurrence between developers and testers. This causes unnecessary bitterness and breaks open cross-party communication channels. As a manager, everyone reminds them that they are always on the same team.


Conclusion: Team members are more productive while working cross-functionally. Agile and Scram encourage cross-functionality. Scrum encourages daily cross-functional communication. Some of the solutions to this problem are: adopting structures such as scram, making product based team, embracing cross-functional team culture, cutting down unnecessary formal meetings, empowering subordinates, solving problems, solving them And call such people to blame game.


Reference: https://reqtest.com/agile-blog/7-ways-to-improve-communication-between-testers-requirements-specialists-and-developers/

 

Regards,

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Anjali Pandey

Anjali is a QA Software Engineer, with experience in Manual Testing. She loves finding Bugs in application. Her hobbies are going for picnics with Friends and Reading stories.

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