Communication Methods/Skills

What is communication?

Communication is the ability and willingness to give and receive information effectively, either verbally or in writing.

The importance

Not having proper communication between IT people and business people is the main cause of failure for almost all Software projects.

Why communication?

• To ask a question e.g. When is our release date?
• To share or inform information e.g. Hey, look at Pooya Khamooshi blog. It's interesting.
• To teach and to learn
• To discuss about a topic e.g. Hey, let's discuss how we do unit testing here ...

The primary goal of my blog is to have a constructive communication mean with myself indeed! By this I mean, this is a tool to organize my thoughts and understandings in a more efficient way. Having said that readers can benefit as well.

Communication Means?

• Email
• Phone
• Formal meeting
• Informal discussion
• Chatrooms e.g. Windows Messenger, IRC

Pros and Cons?

Each mean is essential and has advantages and disadvantages, so you'd better know when to use which.

Email.Pros:

• High accuracy of information
• If immidiate answer is not required for your email
• The other person will have time to think and answer

Email.Cons:

• It's not good if you need an immidiate answer
• There is a possibility that the other person doesn't read or reply to your question or communication, so it's not highly reliable. Indeed, people who are busy or even stressed often ignore emails.

Email.Tips:

• Write accurately
• Write then reread what you wrote to get it improved - don't be too perfectionist though

Phone.Pros:

• Fastest way of communication, so it's good if you need an immidiate answer
• Your emotional mood, tone of voice and how you say what you want to say will affect the quality of your phone call, so this method is highly dependent on the person and emotional mood of both, whereas for example with email your emotional state is not highly important and it's more logical.

Phone.Cons:

• Phone is often not very accurate, maybe the other person doesn't understand exactly what you need from him, so it's better to be written when the topic is long.
• Sometimes people are not immidiately available for your call

Phone.Tips:

• Smile while talking - I know it's not always possible topic-wise
• Be passionate - I know it's not always possible mood-wise
• Listen well and make sure you understood - I know it's not always possible time-wise
• Speak clearly and make sure the other person understood what you said - I know it's not always possible stress-wise

FormalMeeting.Pros:

FormalMeeting.Cons:

InformalMeeting.Pros:

InformalMeeting.Cons:

Chat.Pros:

Chat.Cons: