Clear communication has to be one of the most essential aspects of conducting business. Your purpose should be to achieve effective business communication and since it is a process that includes listening and speaking, you will have to master those. It is out of the question that sometimes miscommunication happens. It could be a result of imprecise requirements, disparity in expectations or perhaps the outcome of poor English skills of some team members. For a project to have success, all members must work together in order to achieve a common goal. As a business owner, you should know how to communicate your idea to your development team in a way that ensures that nothing turns into major stumbling blocks for them.
In this article, we are tackling how those working on software development projects could explain their ideas and business plans to their teams, efficiently.
Maintaining a Good First Impression
Let’s see, you’ll probably approach your future software development team with an introductory email. In it you would describe your idea so that the ones on the receiving end would get a general understanding about your project. You don’t have to lay forth all the technical details of your plan so what exactly should you include in that email?
An introduction to you and your company
- It is vital that you introduce yourself in a few sentences. To them, you are a potential new customer who they would absolutely want to know more about before agreeing to work with/for. A brief introduction about your company is also of paramount importance since it would help them understand the type of industry you are part of.
- Specifying your target audience would be a plus, if mentioned in the email. In order to properly understand the big picture, it is necessary that you determine the audience you are targeting.
- Present to the team what role you play in the company. You could be right in the thick of things, that is, the decision maker or perhaps even a company representative?
Propose your plan in general terms
The team would expect to get a basic knowledge on what it is that you want to work on. Is it an app that you want built? Perhaps an online store? Or some other kind of service. Plus, try to shape your idea into a number of goals you want achieved and a number of issues you want fixed.
Set well-planned deadlines in advance
Be straightforward with deadlines. The least you want is to have deadlines not met and projects going beyond their expected timelines.
Receiving a Response Email
You will receive an email with an invitation to make a call. The purpose of the call is to gather more information about the project and perhaps sign an NDA, if necessary.
During the Call
You would be giving the chance to present your idea in a broader sense. In addition to telling more about yourself and your company, you need to determine other things as well, your technology preferences for instance.
Follow-up Email
When the call is over, the team would send an email summarizing all that has been discussed during the call. Your role here would be to examine that email, read it carefully and make sure there aren’t any missing details or any misunderstood ideas.
Your Response to Summary Email
In this email, you would present your request for proposal, sketches, prototype, etc. While writing the email keep this in mind: Eliminate any assumptions: Multiple business relationships have unspoken rules. This might work for some time but it would be better for each side to openly come forth with their needs and expectations.
Remember: With clear and efficient communication, everyone would be on the same page. Open communication should be a key point, holding back any details might lead to building an environment with an unhealthy employee and boss relationship. And a generally negative attitude that might sabotage your work. On the contrary, if you keep it in mind, more people would be eager to be a part of the team and want to remain so for a long time.
Estimation and Analysis
Now that you have sent all the documentations, the receiving end could have the time to go thoroughly through your plan and analyze it so that they could find a solution. This step takes up to 48 hours to be implemented.
Proposal
Once the team is done with estimation (an estimate of resources: time, money, etc.) they send you a well-written proposal for your project. Proposals provide clients with the information needed when selecting a company to complete their project. In it you should expect the following factors:
- Project summary
- The technologies required for carrying the project
- Members’ names and their positions
- Project duration
- Project time and cost estimate
Final Step
At this step, you will have the full text of the proposal at your disposal for approval. Go through it carefully to make sure everything you had in mind is mentioned and beard in mind. Once you do that, if everything is correct and you are content with the proposal sent to you, you can at last sign it off so that the team could get to work.
In case you spotted any issues in the proposal, notify the team and they would look into the proposal once more so they could provide a new estimate. More often than not, at this stage, a few features get removed or some novel ones are added.
When everything is all set and done, that is, approved, you could move on to contract signing.
Wrapping up
Effective communication is the best way to engage with people in a way that accomplishes your business goals. Knowing these factors, you must reflect on how essential is to have verbal and non-verbal communication. There’s absolutely no doubt that following these the steps mentioned in this article will enhance the quality of your business relationships.