One source of friction I occasionally have in projects is withholding of information within and around a development team. I’m a strong believer in letting the team be aware of everything that is going on, rather than filtering or withholding conversations from them.

In a corporate environment this basically means discouraging private or restricted email threads about project topics. The team as a whole should have the opportunity to see and potentially contribute to discussions as they evolve.

As a matter of course, unless the topic is sensitive or confidential (most aren’t), I will cc the team in my replies to emails I receive. If I receive an email to which I am not replying, I’ll forward the email to the team. I will tell the team about calls I receive or group calls I’m a party to.

I know I do a better job on a feature if I’m aware of the full context of its design and development. I get annoyed when it turns out something useful has been withheld.

So why do people in projects withhold information?

  • It doesn’t involve most of the team? In an agile team, we are all expected to be able to pick up any of the incoming work. That’s a lot easier and faster to do if the backstory to the work isn’t withheld. There are fewer surprises in the work, and less opportunity for mistakes in the implementation if the full story is available.

  • We don’t want to swamp the team with spam? We’re all grown-ups, and we all know how to filter emails. If it truly is something that a team member isn’t remotely interested in, let them make that decision.

  • We don’t want to distract the developers from what they’re doing? Again, we’re grown-ups; we know our priorities in the workplace. We know to get our tasks done and not get overly distracted by possibly tangential issues.

Information and communication transparency is an important factor in team building and cohesiveness. People are going to be happier in the workplace if they feel valued and that their input matters, rather than just being seen as grunts to implement low-level tasks because they’re not considered worth involving in weightier matters. At the development level, there is rarely a good reason for restricting information to a clique ‘in the know’.

It’s not hard to implement a policy of communication transparency:

  • Set up a group email, and ensure that everyone on the team gets into the habit of cc’ing non-sensitive conversations to it.

  • Ensure that minutes or summaries of meetings not involving the whole team are created and shared.

  • Share the results of phone calls or conferences with the group.

It’s all easy stuff to do, and it will help the team as a whole feel more involved, and provide more minds that might catch the issues missed by the people directly involved in the topics.

Shared at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/communication-information-transparency-donal-stewart