Engage your developers for outstanding products
Products need people who can work as a team. It is proven that it takes teams, not individuals, to deliver successful, quality products.
Lack of communication between development teams, design teams and product management teams.
The 3 questions
- What problem are we solving? Problem
- Who has this problem? User
- What do we want to achieve? Solution
The "Solution" is where everyone wants to shine, especially the developers, because it is where you can really see their work.
It is fundamental for the quality of the product, that they also understand very well, the problem that is being solved and the user that has this problem.
Programmers want problems
Developers need to be included in the early stages of product development, from the moment you start to discover the problem and talk about solutions.
Explain a problem to the development team, tell them who has the problem, and you'll see them start talking about solutions immediately.
The software architecture, scalability and overall technology decisions are going to be influenced by what they know about the problem, so the more they know, the better implementations they are going to produce.
The product design
Doing the design and "handoff" to development is not enough. The "handoff" is continuous communication, documentation and above all including the developers from the beginning of the process.
It is everyone's responsibility to make the design and user experience as good as possible, so it is important to raise your hand when you think something is not right.
The interaction between design and development should be an ongoing dialogue, because questions always come up and context is needed.
- *Developers depend on the platform and you have to leverage the benefits and limits of that platform in design.
It is important for designers to learn and understand about the platform because that is where their design is going to "run".
Developers must understand about the designer's work process, their tools and speak "language" to be able to collaborate with them.
Being a specialist is all well and good, but...
Specializing in technology in some cases can be beneficial to teams, but it doesn't mean that a specialist shouldn't know and understand all parts of the product creation process.
Those of us who work in technology, should:
🧠Learn beyond our core job.
😊 Be willing to teach and learn.
🤠Be empathetic
Conclusion
Working as a team is key to product quality and developers need to be included from the beginning of the process.
It is important that developers understand the designer's work process, and that designers understand about the platform where the product is going to "run".
Being a specialist is good, but it is also necessary to be willing to learn and teach with empathy to teammates.