Collaborate visually with non-technical stakeholders
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15 Jun
The relationship between the company’s developers and marketing team is often challenging due to the big difference in technical knowledge and priorities. Nonetheless, it is marketers that ensure a firm link between the developers and the clients. Hence, these two teams should have effective cross-department communication for achieving perfect outcomes.
The digital world requires constant interaction between the company’s developers and marketers. Effective cross-department communication has a huge impact on the overall performance and profitability as well.
Therefore, it is important to identify components that affect this relationship to make them work to the benefit in the future.
How To Build Effective Collaboration Between Marketers And Developers?
There are many things affecting teamwork and relationships. They play a crucial role in the engagement of employees into the workflow and talent development as well.
Building workplace relationships is a necessary condition for younger generations. According to The Deloitte Millennial Survey 2016, Millennials prefer to work in a team or have somebody they can turn to for a piece of advice rather than work on their own.
Top 7 Factors That Make Good Workplace Relationship
Good workspace relationships are a foundation of employees’ efficiency. Here are the key factors affecting it:
- Collaboration: When working together, employees can quickly find a solution to a problem. They feel more motivated and productive.
- Communication: It is an effective tool, allowing you to build bridges not only with teammates but managers and employees as well. It can eliminate a lack of understanding and help with finding a solution to a relevant task.
- Compassion: It is about a desire to help other employees who lack skills or knowledge.
- Empathy: This factor is related to colleagues’ support and the ability to put oneself in someone’s shoes.
- Inclusion: It deals with the consideration of peculiar features (both mental and physical) of each employee. Thus, each team feels that his work or opinion matters.
- Respect: This factor determines an employee’s satisfaction with his job. The role of respect at work is often underestimated. Over 54% of the interviewed employees claimed that they did not get enough respect from their companies’ leaders. This means that they did not feel that their skills were really important.
- Trust: A high trust work environment is characterized by a lower level of stress, higher productivity, openness, and fewer sick days.
6 Ways To Build A Good Relationship Between Marketing and Developers Team
Building a good relationship in a team seems to be easy. Nonetheless, when it comes to establishing interrelations between two teams from different departments, the task becomes a challenge for their leaders.
Here are six effective tips that will turn this business integration into a stress-free process:
Set Clear Common Objectives
If both the marketer and the developer are properly made aware of what needs to be made and what is the desired impact of the task at hand the objectives for the same, communication will be simpler.
For example, if the objective is to create a good landing page, the marketer and developer will have a definitive idea for the goal. It will be easier for each of them to understand what needs to be done.
Find A Common Language For All Parties Involved In Collaboration
At first, it might seem that developers and marketers are from different planets, that they speak different languages, use different skills, and focus on different tasks. One of the best ways to engage both teams in discussion or collaboration is to use visuals. Visuals take away the guesswork and the language barrier altogether. Neither the developers are aware of the marketing terminology nor the marketers are aware of the technical terms. Visuals, however, are a different story. Pointing at something on a screen and telling what needs to change is a much better alternative to textual form of communication.
Find A Common Space To Exchange Ideas
Having an exclusive workspace for the entire team brings all the work-related elements in one place. If the personal apps and work apps are mixed, there will be a lot of confusion while communicating. Also, defining the purpose of all the apps that are used at work helps in making the process a lot more streamlined.
Finding a common virtual space is a good solution for all parties (e.g., Google Docs, Miro, zipBoard etc.). It is especially relevant in conditions when most workers face the need to work from home, which has become the new normal at the moment. It will bring them all together and allow them to exchange ideas at different stages of project development freely.
Some of the best tools for communication, data storage, and share include:
- File sharing platforms (Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, WeTransfer);
- Chat platforms (Chatwork, Google Hangouts, Slack, Twist);
- CRM tools (ActiveCampaign, HubSpot Sales Hub; Zoho Analytics, SAP Crystal Reports);
- Collaboration and bug tracking tools (zipBoard);
- Video platforms for virtual meetings (GoToMeeting, Google Meet, RingCentral Video, Zoom Meetings);
- Joint calendars for tracking projects’ deadlines (Calendly, Google Calendar, Thunderbird Lightning Calendar).
Use Flexible Deadlines
Each employee has his own pace of work. While one person notices important details in just a few seconds, another person may need more time to carry out the needed operations.
When it comes to marketers and developers, they have different specificity of work and objectives. Respecting another team’s processes is important when working together.
It may take less time for the marketers to perform the task and more time from developers, and vice versa. To bring their ideas and developments together, one can arrange either personal or virtual meetings to ensure that everything works well, foster better collaboration, and boost morale.
More Explanations
Considering that marketers and developers present different knowledge areas, they may feel a lack of enthusiasm for improvements or changes. Therefore, it is important to explain not only “What” should be done but “Why” as well.
For example, “we need to change the colour of the background” sounds better with “because it makes the text easily readable”. Providing explanations for your suggestions no matter which side you are in helps your case too. Focussing on the impact of the change is better than focussing on the change itself.
Wrapping up
Proper team collaboration between marketers and developers helps the organization with creating a product that is desirable to the target market. Moreover, it increases the business value of the product altogether as there is no guessing game on what is needed by the users. Following the basic steps mentioned above would help the organization to achieve its strategic goals as actual problems can be solved.
Team collaboration is pretty important when it comes to development but it needs to be perfect when it comes to marketers and developers. Marketers have insights as to how the product would be received by the end-users and developers can make just the right web application/eLearning course that would help them with their issues.
About the Author
Melissa Mauro is a freelance writer who creates quality and original content. She is working for the companies Best Writers Online and Online Writers Rating writing services review. She believes that creativity and improvement are things, which distinguish a good writer.
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