Your organization likely boasts powerful, accomplished teams that consistently complete projects successfully; but, there may also be teams within your organization that could use more collaboration.
Collaboration offers many advantages, from improved efficiency and faster project delivery times, to team members communicating efficiently when working on joint development projects. But it is vitally important for success that team members establish good working relationships when cooperating on development initiatives.
- Share knowledge and expertise
Remember the times your team members came together with ideas and built upon each other’s brilliant suggestions to produce a brilliant solution? That’s what collaboration is all about: teams that possess collaborative abilities can approach projects from multiple angles, uncovering assumptions or potential solutions that might go overlooked without different team members’ opinions being heard out.
Establishing effective collaborative skills is no simple task, as you need to set clear goals and guidelines for your team members. A meeting or onboarding process could be used as an opportunity to lay out these guidelines for sharing information and communicating among team members.
Set the tone from the top by making collaboration a core company value. Managers and leaders must be open to collaboration, encouraging a blameless environment and giving teams time to brainstorm creative solutions together. In fact, one study demonstrated that code written by programmers working in pairs produced 15% fewer bugs than code written alone.
- Communicate clearly
Software development projects often combine specialized knowledge with highly technical aspects that require collaboration across teams based in different geographical locations; when communication fails, issues quickly escalate out of control.
Accessing the right tools is key for maintaining clear communications among remote team members. A centralized project management system like Jira or Trello can increase transparency, allowing everyone to monitor each other’s progress in near real-time and providing individuals with feedback about code that’s not working correctly or requires improvement.
Another strategy for increasing clarity is avoiding “command-style” communication in favor of open-ended questions instead. Developers tend to be more engaged when they’re asked to find solutions on their own rather than being told how to solve a problem; this leads to more collaborative, efficient teams.
- Encourage innovation
Building collaboration requires team members being open and honest with one another; allowing healthy disagreements while working towards finding innovative solutions over time.
Encourage new ideas and explore unconventional concepts by setting aside space for innovation and hosting regular brainstorm sessions where everyone is welcome to contribute ideas. Make sure these new concepts have the resources necessary for their implementation – such as funding or mentorship support – before taking any risks on them.
Don’t be afraid to encourage team members to explore unexplored markets or submarkets; this will yield great rewards if done properly, though it will require both effort and patience from everyone on your team. Reminding the team that innovation is an ongoing journey can help, as there may be instances when projects fall behind schedule due to unexpected delays; be sure to discuss this possibility and look for solutions before it becomes an issue – this requires strong leadership with clear expectations being set beforehand.
- Accountability
Consider your last collaborative experience working on a project with cross-functional team. Your mind likely overflowed with fresh ideas as you built off one another’s suggestions; without collaboration, coming up with the final solution would have been far harder.
Assigning each team member’s responsibilities can ensure everyone understands their role within a collaborative environment. When conducting interviews and onboarding processes, be sure to include these discussions so there is no ambiguity.
Team leaders should foster an atmosphere in which developers feel safe to discuss their work openly and experiment with solutions without fear of judgement from team leaders or peers. Although this experimentation may not always yield positive outcomes, it will help make your development team more efficient and innovative. It is also crucial that team successes be recognized, while holding post-project retrospective sessions where lessons learned can be applied post-project will boost morale while reinforcing collaboration across your development team.