Hi Friends,

Have you ever tried to explain how the Internet works to your grandmother? It’s hard, right? We struggle daily with this challenge of communicating technical concepts to non-experts.

One of the ways we’ve improved technical communication is to have our developers act as project managers. We call this role “developer lead.” A developer in this role manages the project, writes code for it (along with other team members) and is the client’s point of contact.

We love this approach. It cuts out the middleman between the person who understands the details of the code and the person who wants work done. A client wants to know why some video uploads are squished? The developer lead can answer with the technical reason as well as the plain English one.

Still, we’re not perfect.

At times, our developer leads slip into using technical language. Clients have told us they’ve felt confused and out of the loop after discussions because of this.

How do we improve?

We’re figuring it out. 

It makes sense that this is challenging. It is actually hard to switch between talking with developers all day and talking with clients.

One approach is continually checking for understanding, no matter who you are talking to. 

Another is documenting conversations. We recently had a fast-moving project with several client conversations each day. We documented expectations and next steps after each one to make sure we were all on the same page. 

A third idea is asking for a pair when talking with clients. Bring in another person who can help explain concepts or clarify points. We pair when we program, why not pair when we communicate?

Cheers,

Stephanie