Refuting the idea that the business-developer relationship is obscure, we reveal a dynamic environment where each decision profoundly influences the development team. This interaction significantly guides the project towards its ultimate goal.
So, let’s dive into some genuine insights and overlooked aspects that shed light on these connections. It’s crucial for businesses to grasp that there’s more to it than just tasks and deadlines. Recognizing the human element is essential for creating a positive work environment and achieving successful project outcomes.
The Ripple Effect: How Business Actions Resonate in Developer Realities
Budgeting and Deadlines: Setting the Pace
If the team works within constraints, they may overwork themselves, feel excessive pressure, and believe they are not appreciated or that the business doesn’t understand development. Clear communication of budget constraints and deadlines establishes the rhythm of our collaboration. However, miscalculated pacing can leave developers feeling overworked and undervalued, eroding trust in the business and the overall work environment.
Scope Modifications or Regular Reprioritization: Sustaining Flow
Scope modifications or regular reprioritization not only introduce chaos and unpredictability into developers’ lives but also undermine product quality and team morale. The team’s dedication to building a decent product means additional changes require them to work extra hard and invest more hours, particularly if there is no budget reevaluation or deadline extension. Regular change requests, without considering the product’s stage and the need for reprioritization, create uncertainty among developers about the strategic direction, resulting in a decrease in overall excitement for the product and loss of trust to the business team.
Complete Product Reevaluation and Pivot: The Strategic Finale
Sometimes, business decisions involve stopping work on the product before reaching a key point such as MVP or an important release. This demoralizes the team and makes them doubt the leadership’s strategic abilities, especially when the product is near completion. Developers take pride in their work, and such decisions can make them feel unappreciated and disregarded as professionals.
Ultimately, pivoting, changing scope, reprioritizing—all of these things are very often a result of insufficient or nonexistent market analysis and appropriate and reasonable conclusions from the received market data. Or even if there is data and the initial course was right, there was not enough or quality work done at the “ideation and design” stage. These are all things that happen with the direct involvement of business strategists. So, if you are one of them, it’s on you. You have to take responsibility for your decisions and not make developers always “save” you from wrong choices.
Is this important?
Why should businesses take into account these reactions from developers? It’s often seen as just work—people are hired to do a job, and they should follow instructions, correct? However, we’re all human beings; it’s challenging to simply switch off our passion for what we do. While some individuals might successfully detach emotionally from their work and move from one task to the next, the question remains: Is it genuinely desirable to have your product developed by uninspired, indifferent professionals who don’t invest in its success?
So, assuming you do care, and you believe your development team is inspired by your product and wants to make it the most amazing one that will bring you success and solve some pain points for users. So, here are some things to consider…
Understanding the human side of developers is the key to sustaining a healthy collaboration
Pride in Professionalism: Crafting Quality Work
Developers, encompassing everyone on the implementation side, from QA, designers, technical leads, and scrum facilitators to product owners and infrastructure techs, are highly educated and intelligent individuals. It’s a rare occurrence when they are not actively pursuing personal and professional growth and success. Hence, it’s nearly guaranteed that they take pride in their work as professionals. Delivering a robust outcome—a functional product they can attribute to their own creation—is of utmost importance to them.
On numerous occasions, I’ve found myself delivering a subpar product due to adherence to an underdeveloped strategy or following a lead that, in my professional judgment, was not the optimal choice—sometimes, it was outright wrong. In instances like these, I’ve felt a sense of embarrassment, prompting me to exclude such products from my portfolio. I’ve hesitated to continually clarify, saying, “These aspects of the product weren’t my decisions. While I disagreed, I had to implement them nonetheless.”
Emotional Toll of Redoing Work: Building Trust
Developers experience frustration when tasked with redoing work that was already completed and functional, particularly if they need to discard completed functionalities altogether. They invest their hearts, time, and effort into the product. Witnessing these efforts being discarded is not only demoralizing but especially disheartening when entire projects, particularly those nearing completion, are consigned to waste.
In concentration camps during the Nazi regime, individuals were subjected to a form of torture where they were compelled to perform tasks that were subsequently rendered meaningless. For instance, they might be instructed to excavate a trench only to fill it with earth repeatedly. The profound emotional impact of such experiences is evident in how it profoundly affects individuals.
Investing one’s heart into a project and witnessing it almost reach completion, taking pride in its outcome, only to receive a directive to halt a couple of months before the release because “business changed their minds”? It wouldn’t be surprising if the entire team decides to leave for an employer who values their efforts more.
I observed a team precisely do that in a very similar situation. The company, lacking an internal development team, had to engage an offshore agency for additional work, eventually rehiring one of the developers who had departed at triple the rate to rectify mistakes made by the agency.
Trusting Professional Expertise: Unified Collaboration
Insisting on your opinions and choices on subjects that should be decided by specialists—such as when business demands interface elements to be or act in a certain way that contradicts established product UI or User Experience—can be counterproductive. While business ultimately owns the product, UI/UX professionals are not just skilled in manipulating design tools like Figma. They bring expertise and experience to provide informed opinions on how UI and UX should function seamlessly.
Certainly, you can contribute your insights, but persistently demanding that things work or be built in a specific way may entail overlooking the expertise of professionals. Unless you are representing business strategy and making a specific request within your professional background, it’s advisable to adhere to the overall strategy and entrust the professionals you’ve hired to deliver their best work for your product. If you’re unsatisfied, continue seeking improved solutions, ensuring complete clarity between how the product should function and the needs of both the business and the users.
However, it is strongly advisable to refrain from making explicit demands regarding specific ways the product functions when there are already professionals on your team equipped with the experience and knowledge to make the best possible decisions in that area. Disregarding this may lead your professionals to once again feel that their expertise is neither needed nor appreciated, resulting in a sense of dismissal. Who would want to continue working in such an environment?
In the end, the path of least resistance is to “Do what you do best and delegate the rest.” I must emphasize the importance of trusting those who “does the best” – excels in their roles, as it fosters an environment where everyone can contribute their best efforts, leading to the creation of the best possible product.
Building a Better Workplace
As individuals, we are professionals—educated and dedicated, striving to deliver impactful work that benefits your business, your users, and ultimately transforms lives for the better. This commitment holds true even if we don’t showcase it on our LinkedIn profiles. The pride we take in our work, coupled with our achievements, shapes our identity, contributing to our sense of self and professional value, underscoring the impact we bring to the world.
Our desire is simple—we seek acknowledgment that our efforts are needed and valued, and we long for our voices to be heard. Collaboration fuels our drive to collectively create something remarkable. Beyond this, we yearn for stability in our lives, aiming for a work environment that is not only welcoming and caring but also secure enough to foster long-term commitment. The prospect of constant job-hopping in search of appreciation is not our preference.
Regrettably, circumstances sometimes confine us to stressful environments where the acknowledgment of our professional worth is lacking. This becomes particularly challenging as work, a substantial part of our lives, becomes overwhelming, making the entire work culture unbearable. Such a culture will never be able to succeed.
In recognizing these aspirations, an understanding of the challenges faced by professionals emerges. By acknowledging the value they bring and respecting the intricacies of their roles, a harmonious and thriving work environment can be cultivated. It is through this mutual understanding that businesses and professionals can embark on a shared journey, where the exchange of ideas, respect for expertise, and the creation of innovative solutions become the cornerstones of success. Embracing the unique perspectives and dedication of developers not only enriches the work culture but propels us towards a future where collaboration and respect are the driving forces behind transformative achievements.
No responses yet