Today I wanted to continue our discussion on the “feeling” type of concerns when working with a remote software development team.
For dealing with the situation, “He/she said yes he will do it, or he said he understands, but I have a feeling he/she doesn’t really understand,” I believe it can be handled in a similar manner attempting to obtain concrete data to support or not support your feelings. This feeling can be common when dealing with remote teams located in different parts of the world. If people are dealing with English as a 2nd or 3rd language they may not ask as many questions as you would like which would show they are thinking about the request, or that they understand. The person could be not as comfortable with their English skills to ask the required questions, or they could just be quiet in general, or it could be that they are afraid to ask too many questions because in some cultures it would not be good to question the client. Therefore it is going to be up to you to dig in further and help dissipate your “feelings” that there may be a misunderstanding. There can be several ways to start with this. Ask your remote team to “write down” was is discussing during status meetings and send a recap to everyone in the team, after the meeting. Review these notes to see what is understood or where there may be issues. There is also nothing wrong with asking a team member to repeat what they heard while you are in the online meeting or on the conference call, etc. This request can be validated by simply saying that you just want to make sure everyone is on the same page. No one should have a problem with this type of request for better communication. If you are not satisfied with the oral delivery of what the developer is to do, ask them to put it in an email or an IM. These types of steps should help the PM determine if additional explanation is needed for a particular task. If you now believe you have done all of the explaining you can do, and the developer has explained what he/she thinks should be done, you should at least have concrete evidence as to the level of understanding; i.e. here is what I told them they needed to do, and here is what they think they have to do and the two do not match. If that is the case, it may be time to talk with your vendor about the situation. You may need to make a team member change or you, and your vendor, may need to dig in more deeply as to why there is a disconnect. The last step should bring even more concrete evidence one way or the other. Once the developer starts to actually work on the feature or request, you will also get concrete evidence as to whether or not the developer understands what they are doing. More relevant questions should come up, plus you will be able to look at actual code and very quickly you may be able to look at actual results. All of these results will either help validate or alleviate your feelings that there is a misunderstanding.
I have one more “feeling” situation I want to talk about next time.