Engineers are not good at dealing with customers!

Tom Smykowski in Office Space

Engineers and developers are not good at communication! How many times we have heard this sentence? Countless times.

Now, the simple fact that we are telling something about a group of people, we should already start wondering if it is a stereotype.

But I am sure somebody of you will reply that there is something true for sure about that… it must be like that, you have seen yourself!!!

Sure it is possible. Nobody is perfect and everybody of us has room for improvement. But the problem is another. That often, this situation is created by the fact an organization is incentivizing opposing behaviors. Conflicting responsibilities, conflicting objectives, tunnel vision… some teams, or even some people in a team, may be pressured to ensure stability, other to push for speed at all cost. And they may be following metrics, and incentives, that encourage people to pursue specific goals, disregarding others.

This, obviously, can easily lead to conflict of interests, and reduced feedback loops.

The idea should be to align everybody to the value stream, to break down barriers, instead to encourage and sustain the opposite. Pursuing personal goals not aligned with the overall organization interest, and the creation of silos.

The simple fact there are communication issues, is the evidence that there unresolved conflicts. And conflicts are solved by working on norms valid for everybody, for sure not stigmatizing a behavior in one person, and justififying to excess when shown by somebody else.

And there is another aspect to be considered. Leadership, as teached in SAFe, is about concentrating on the good side.

If everything is reduced at saying that engineers are not good at communication, are we sure we are looking at the problem from the right direction?