I am a strong communicator, both verbally and in writing.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. This line and many variants of it land on virtually everybody’s resume at some point. Who doesn’t want to be a good communicator? Actually, who among us doesn’t believe we’re a good communicator, at least in the right situations?

The truth is trickier.

I’ve known people who are poor communicators, and unaware of it — and I’ve known excellent communicators who doubt it, and therefore sabotage themselves. For myself, it’s hit or miss, and while I’m generally a good communicator, some situations crop up that unexpectedly send me scrambling for words.

It’s a problem that most everyone encounters from time to time, but I’m going to get self-centered for a moment and say that the software world has a particular problem with it. See, in most software development environments, you have a few particular kinds of people:
– Developers, who think along rigid lines, and hate vagueness as a general rule
– Project managers, some of whom have been developers and some of whom haven’t
– QA, who sometimes have a technical background, but usually not extensive
– Clients, who have a firm grasp of their own business logic, but not necessarily of what they expect of the software

All this hodgepodge of personality makes it a lot harder for everyone to communicate effectively.

And in a lot of cases, they simply don’t. People cease to communicate. The wheels start squeaking, but sometimes nobody hears them. In software development, the product is the end goal, and often the metrics of builds and sales are all that higher management notices. They don’t see the air bubble coming down the line — things are still being built, work turns over, productivity is declining, but not necessarily in a noticeable way.

So until a deadline is missed and a product can’t be released on time, nothing happens to deter the communication issues. And by that time, it’s a much bigger deal, much harder to fix.

I don’t have a full answer for you — at least, not one I could fit in less than twenty or thirty pages — so I speak mainly for awareness. Pay attention to yourself and those around you. Make sure you’re communicating, even when it’s a pain. Ask questions, make conversation, learn what everyone on your team is up to. You’ll find your own life a lot easier down the line for the effort.