I’m a business analyst, and a big part of my job involves working with engineers and product managers to gather detailed, in-depth information. For reasons I don’t fully understand (though I have my theories), I often find that engineers, in particular, seem oddly reluctant to share the information I need. This makes the process more challenging than I’d like. Does anyone have tips or tricks for building trust with engineers to encourage them to share information more willingly and quickly?
EDIT: Here’s a summary with more details for those who requested more info: I’m working on optimizing processes related to our in-house file ingestion system, which we’ve been piecing together over time to handle tasks it wasn’t originally designed for. The system works well enough now, but it’s still very much a MacGyver setup—duct tape and dental floss holding things together. We got through crunch time with it, but now the goal is to refine and smooth everything out into a process that’s efficient, clear, and easy for everyone to follow.
Part of this involves getting all the disparate systems and communication silos talking to each other in a unified way—JIRA is going to be the hub for that. My job is to make sure that the entire pipeline—from ticket creation, to file ingestion, to processing and output—is documented thoroughly (but not pedantically) and that all teams involved understand what’s required of them and why.
Where I’m running into challenges is in gathering the nitty-gritty technical details from engineers. I need to understand how their processes work today, how they’ve solved past issues, and what they think would make things better in an ideal world. But I think there’s some hesitation because they’re worried about “incriminating” themselves or having mistakes come back to haunt them.
I’ve tried to make it clear that I’m not interested in punishing anyone for past decisions or mistakes—on the contrary, I want to learn from them to create a better process moving forward. My goal is to collaborate and make their jobs easier, not harder, but I think building trust and comfort will take more time.
If anyone has strategies for improving communication with engineers—especially around getting them to open up about technical details without fear—I am all ears.
Accept “I have no idea” as an answer, and don’t use it as an opportunity to push things in the direction you want.
learn to account for people being wrong, and don’t punish them for it.
Engineers want to be accurate. They don’t want to give answers that they’re unsure about or just speculating.
Early in their careers they’re often willing to, but that gets beaten out of them pretty quickly by people with deadlines. Expressing uncertainty often means the person interprets the answer in the direction they want, and then holds the engineer to that answer.
“It could be anywhere from 2-8 months I think, but we won’t know until we’re further into the design phase” is taken as 2 months, planned around, and then crunch Time starts when it starts to go over. Or revising an estimate once new information or changing requirements are revealed is treated as incompetence, even though more work taking more time is expected.
It’s in the self interest of the engineer to be cagey. “I don’t like to give estimates this early” is much harder to turn into a solid commitment than an earnest best estimate given the current known state of the project.
Similar for resources required or processes. Anything you don’t say is unlikely to be held against you.
This is brilliant. I often suspected they did not want to “incriminate” themselves, and I have tried assuring them that that is in no way what I am about. I am looking to optimize processes, and I am very eager for their ideas on what would work better than what we’ve been doing.
Verbal assurances mean little to many. At least put it in an email. Otherwise CYA dominates.