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.
They are probably unsure of your motives; are you analysing the business or analysing them? Software problems are extremely hard to estimate unless there is almost complete disclosure and discovery. It’s like asking people how long a crossword is going to take without seeing the clues. Or asking how long they’re going to spend on a chess move in 3 turn’s time. They are possibly cagey because you are asking questions that betray the fact you are seeing this as a management problem rather than listening to what they’re telling you about their craft.
Or possibly your manner of communicating is attuned to more socially intuitive people. Try presenting what you need as a problem for them to solve with a clear start and end. That way you’re collaborating, and they know when their obligation to interact with you is “done”.
Instead of open questions like “can you tell me how X is currently working?” try specific problem setting questions like “I’d like to see if we can make X process be 10% faster, what would that look like?” or “what would you say are the top two things that affect the time process Y takes?”
They may not want to offend you, because many of the answers might be “obvious” and, also, if they’re honest workers, as many are, there may not be any clear way to improve certain things as they’re already trying their hardest, and your investigation feels more like an inquisition.
Again, it may be that you’re asking someone “how can I get you to get this crossword done faster?”. It’s sort of the wrong question. Unless you’re willing to listen to their bugbears which might be the actual things affecting how efficiently things run but might not be the kind of answers project management want to hear.
I’m at the stage of “I want to know how your process has worked up until now, and how you would like it to work, in a perfect world.” Which did seem to garner a positive response.
To add onto this, sometimes it’s about getting more specific with your questions to get the more specific answers.
For context of how I would suggest structuring these detail questions, here’s how I think about code I write or debug: The functions and classes my code is made of are meant to get specific inputs to become specific outputs via a defined process; I think of this as inputs->how->outputs. Figuring out what inputs you need to execute the “how” part to get the outputs you want is the puzzle of each function or class I write. The “how” part can even be broken down further into smaller chunks of inputs->how->outputs.
I think asking your engineer friends to frame things in this context would both show your appreciation for the nitty-gritty details you are needing, as well as give you further context to ask more detailed drill-down questions (about deeper levels of inputs->how-> outputs) if needed. For example: “you said to get inputs A and B to result in output C, we need to run the fizzbuzz algorithm on A and B. What roles do those inputs have in that algo? Do we have to do any preprocessing on A or B before we fizzbuzz them, or any post processing of the fizzbuzz’s direct output to get C?” “Oh, yeah, we have a wrapper that takes A and makes it column-major so that fizzbuzz executes faster, but we need output C to be row-major for when it goes into otherFunction(), so we do such-and-such to fizzbuzz’s output to get the C we output.” This gets you a level of detail deeper, and you could ask further questions about the transformations happening to A and the post-processing of fizzbuzz output to get C, as well as get more context for otherFunction to ask more about later.
You could also use this context to ask further questions about what they think the future implementation should look like. “Are there any assumptions we can make about A and B or how C is used that could simplify how we go from the former to the latter? Are there any requirements on the inputs and outputs that would better be either relaxed or made more stringent, and if so, in what way?”
I hope that helps! Best wishes for your work on this project–streamlining processes is hard, especially when working with other people’s code, but your appreciation for the details to get things implemented well is admirable!
This is gold. Are you looking for a job?
I’m glad you found it helpful! And no, I love my current job, but I appreciate the sentiment!
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.
I’d wager that the engineers have experienced such promises in the past and got burned. Engineers, by nature, are very analytical. Re-gaining trust that was once burned will take a lot of work. And managers like you are exactly the kind of people that burn engineers.
Good point. I’ve saved all my vitriol for our incompetent Product Team though 😜
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A lot of great answers here, but there’s another possibility I haven’t seen mentioned yet. When you are gathering information like this it says to the engineer that you want to change things, and they don’t know if that change is going to make things easier or harder for them. Usually things only ever get harder as a project lives longer. So they’ll be less incentivised to help you unless you give them an idea of what you intend to do and specify what problems you intend to solve to make life easier for them personally.
Also, as an engineer, things like this I generally see as less important than making sure the product works and that development is proceeding on pace. Having to explain everything about my job to someone coming in with 0 prior knowledge is a huge waste of time.
One tip I saw mentioned works well in this situation: get them to start complaining about things they hate about the current processes. Everyone likes to complain because it is cathartic.
It will help if you can educate yourself before talking to them. Present the info you have and ask them to fill in the blanks or make corrections. Most engineers like to solve problems, so present this as one for them to solve like a puzzle. Engineers are generally not novelists. Don’t ask them to just start spitting out history of The Process to you.
first, you’re talking about software “engineers” which means you aren’t talking about engineers in general.
and there’s a good chance none of them have ever had an engineering course in their life. they’re hackers who are good at making code.
the reason they probably seem reluctant to share is that what they’ve cobbled together with bubble gum and bailing wire is difficult to explain quickly and thoroughly AND they’d be taking time away from their assigned tasks to do so without having any change to their deadlines.
stop blaming them and start blaming their management for not giving them the time and permission they need to help you. go to the management and say you need so-and-so to be assigned 40 or 80 hours specifically to help you understand these widgets.
and in the future you need to push for clean up, documentation, lessons learned, and training to be part of every project estimate.
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Tracking down why all that junk exists and if its still required can take a staggering amount of time. Trying to juggle that with your day to day is…not practical.
Yes. Please deep-dive into it all and then schedule a long, slow sit-down, regarding the Morton mod, but also be prepared to justify why the Penske Project is behind the arbitrary and impossible schedule some DeVry grad has already set for you.
(I suspect OP will find a lot of “in what fucking time?!?” concerns when it comes to knowledge ‘synch’ or documenting, since neither of those are billable endeavours and no one wants a deadline for the next project crushed because of the prep and meetings justifying the time over-run for the last project)
This is why documentation of business process and methods is so important. A lot of time, the engineer solves seemingly small problems without oversight, so imagine a decades old collection of many innocuous solutions leading to the whole ‘dunno what this does’. If it’s important enough to commit to a mission critical system, it’s important enough to document.
Also, it’s incredibly frustrating for an engineer to be given a one line brief, work his ass off producing the solution, then have the business analyst take credit for the work, and not bother to even learn how the system works, even at a high level. It sows distrust and disdain.
This is why documentation of business process and methods is so important
absolutely not… if you think that random code from 10 years ago is difficult to figure out if it’s still needed, try that with documentation!
IT systems are living, dynamic beasts… they should be built in such a way that makes them comprehensible with relatively minimal effort, on their own, because the code is the only source of truth and everything else may as well be a lie
Lol. You’re highlighting ops problem exactly. Oversimplification of the issue and delegation of the documentation problem to the engineering department is the exact reason people there feel resentment. It’s simply not their job. As the other commenter posted - the system spans multiple disciplines and workflows, yet it seems only the engineer is tasked with understanding it all, in order to build the system. Consultants register this as a risk, and management assigns this to engineering because ‘only they understand the code’ - is exactly the problem op is facing.
The system is the property of the company. The company’s language should be used to capture it’s design, function and intent (what it does) versus how it is done (it’s expression in code). There’s a reason they call it ‘living documentation’ - it,.and the company’s understanding, should evolve along with the code.
Edit: are you seriously letting ‘random’ segments into your code? I think I found your problem…
This is…very interesting
I think people have already done a god job of covering the likely concerns. Here are the things I would emphasize.
Bear in mind that a lot of developers just hate doing documentation. :-}
Make sure that their management has made working with you a part of the engineers’ work load and goals. No one is going to provide good information when every minute they spend is putting them behind on things that directly affect their careers.
Provide them with a context for what you are trying to accomplish. Tell them the why and how, not just the what. That information can be very general or it can be at the level of providing specific examples of how you intend to present the information you gather. Find out what they would like to know, particularly since it’s likely to vary from person to person.
Keep in mind how different people can be. There are reasons for the stereotypes about developers, but their are pointy ends on every bell curve. You are likely to find a few people who communicate very well and can help you get the information you need from those who do not.
You sound like you have good intentions and the skill set for doing this kind of work. Don’t let negative responses discourage you. Work with the people you have, treat them with respect, and make sure they get credit for the work they do with you. Let them see what you’re doing and ask for feedback. There are going to be things you can’t control in the process, but if you work openly and in good faith people will usually respond in kind.
Thank you for the positive response, and for not automatically assuming I’m some corporate asshole drone 🤣 . I have leadership support from all teams involved.
Sounds like a good old leadership trust issue. Unfortunately the only thing that solves that is time, beer (or other social activity), making yourself useful to them in other ways, and being honest with them.
If they’re afraid of punishment you can always try an amnesty box. They put what they would say in the box, anonymously, and you discuss it without trying to figure out who submitted it. Even if it’s obvious. Then they don’t have to trust you so much as the process.
Good luck to you. Sounds like you’re working at the intersection of management meets reality, and nobody has extra love for a scrum master.
I can recommend honestly and incremental adoption. It will be difficult to eat this whole sandwich at once.
I don’t actually want to change what they do; they have the thing working great. I just want to make sure they are getting the necessary tickets with the correct information they need, in the way that works best for them. Understanding their process is just ancillary to this effort, because I like to understand all the moving parts. I do also need to make sure the information is getting to the necessary teams in the next steps after their part of the process, with the correct information, and if there are any hiccups.
Maybe they see your job as pointless waste of their time. The engineers put it together with the limitted timeframe and budget they were given, and dont need someone to tell thwm how to suck eggs. They know whats broken and how to fix it and they know how to do it.
To make it worse, you will do none of the work but will take the majority of recognition as c suite will associate the change with consultation and not the more time or money allocated to rhe team.
The best time for analysis is at the start of the project as it reduces the learning and consultation. Now, its an uphill battle, and frankly, not needed.
I’ve worked very closely with engineers and I’m engineering adjacent myself. Most of the highly technical types I know in every field (myself included) struggle to talk to people about their job because they no longer know what normal people do or don’t know and they don’t want to come across as condecendong. Like for me the basic refrigeration cycle feels like something everyone should know but I logically know that actually isn’t the case and at the same time I don’t know where the laymans actual knowledge on the topic begins. Like do I need to start with explaining that boiling liquids remove heat? Do I need to start with what boiling even is? Do normal people even know that things boil at different temps at different pressures? If I start explaining any of this are they jist going to look at me like I’m an ass and say “Of course I know how thermodynamics works”? Eventually I just decide it’s better to not to talk to them.
At the same time though, if you do manage to break the ice with them then you are more likely to sucessfully get a passionate stream of consiousness rant from them because they’re passionate and now they know that you can be trusted not to see them as being condescending when they overexplain. Honestly the best way I’ve found to break the ice with technical types is to get them to start complaining about some part of their job. That also sounds like exactly what you’re looking for if you’re trying to make their jobs easier. But if they start seeing you as someone who it is safe to complain to then they will start seeing ypu as someone it is safe to talk to about other things.
Also as always there is a relevant XKCD.
Of course I know how thermo dynamics works! But uh if you could just explain it for my friend here, gestures in general direction of dog, that would be perfect.
I am the wife of a mechanical engineer, who’s brothers are mechanical and electrical engineers, who’s parents are electrical engineers, who’s best friends are aerospace engineers.
Basically I married into a family of robots, and I agree with this commenter here.
This is the crux of why senior engineers struggle to talk about work I think, and I find the best way for me to get them talking, is to try to learn something small about their work, enough that I can ask intelligent questions, and then listen carefully to the replies.
After a while they open up and I get to listen to the best rants about “special metals” or “systems architecture” or “braking systems in the railway”. It’s awesome.
It’s how I connect with my husband.
The other wives stand in a circle and roll their eyes about them talking about work because they don’t understand anything. “Oh there they go, talking about work again.”
I decided I didn’t want that to be me, and told myself I would listen when they were talking, listen when my husband was working from home. Learn to ask intelligent questions about his work, and eventually, I knew what he was talking about.
Enough that I now freelance in condition monitoring, giving me yet another way to connect with him.
Ask intelligent questions, get excited about the replies, encourage them so they know you won’t be insulted when they assume you don’t know about <speciality subject> and you will have them opening up in no time.
This is a really sweet comment that’s brightened my day while also being practical advice
You should always listen to your significant other. Of all the people in the world, they chose you to talk to
Have you asked them why they are reluctant to turn over the deets?
I’ve certainly withheld info because explaining DMARC is a lot more time consuming then just saying it’s a special type of spam filter.
Actually, no. Not in so many words. It seems so simple. My theory was that they are afraid of admitting mistakes because they think I’m going to “report” them or something, and make them look bad. And I have opened at least 3 times with how I am not remotely interested in anything like that, and I am looking to document process, and get their ideas for what an ideal process would look like for them. I feel like they don’t believe me.
Again, verbal assurances mean nothing, especially if they know the issue has internal political implications as this one obviously does. And even if they believe you, that doesn’t mean they trust your boss, so anything they say could still burn them later. Words alone can’t resolve this dilemma.
Also, has anyone tried what you’re trying before? If so, maybe you’re struggling because of past failure, not your fault but still your problem now.
This is an area my company has historically sucked at. Hard. I aim to fix that, and in fact that is the reason my team was created.
I’m an engineer for past 20 years ,and the moment I get a whiff of some biz person fluffing bullshit I check out. Not saying you’re like that but something to be mindful of
So be real, honest, straightforward, put in effort into understanding the technicals so youre not just a sales annoyance or engineers will write you off right away IMO
Also I don’t think some people realize how busy or hard engineering can be. I’ve been working my ass off on a ground up new product and a lot of stuff just falls to the wayside out of lack of time
There’s also !askelectronics@discuss.tchncs.de !engineering@sh.itjust.works among others
That last paragraph hits home, but in a sad way for me. I spent most of the last year working on a new project to streamline one of the biggest time sinks we have, and as we’re coming up on having an MVP ready to start beta testing, my org just dumped the entire team other than 1 guy. So I lost the guy who was my peer/dba on the project, and the dude who knows how to run the driver software.
Going to try to see if we can salvage what we made since it’s still needed, but fuck that wrecks a ton of time and effort. And really sucks cuz my team had to pick up the slack while I was trying to get this working, and we don’t even have anything to show for it…
Thank you!!! In fact I have been emphasizing that I need to know the technicals, and that they should not worry about getting too detailed, because I need a very thorough understanding so I can best come up with a process for how they do file ingestion (which mostly is up to them) but then also how the information gets to them, and how they output the data, in the best, most thoroughly documented (without being uselessly pedantic) way possible. Which is pretty much going to be getting everything into JIRA, and eliminating all the uselessly disparate systems that people are trying to stitch together currently. I need to make sure all the teams along the road of this process are communicating with each other, and at are at least having a basic understanding of the whys behind what is required of the process. And of course that it is efficient and fast and definitely not cumbersome.
Have you stopped to consider that the current solution might be better than an all JIRA one? I can definitely see a lot of “file ingestion” pipelines that would be much better handled by a bunch of different systems intertwined than JIRA, especially for automated file ingestion (which I guess is what you’re doing? Hard to know but hard for it to be something else).
I don’t know what’s the situation there, but if I was an engineer on one such project I would explain to the person why it’s not feasible, but it could be that that got interpreted as not explaining stuff. An easy to understand example would be someone asking what’s the best way to replace a car (that has been cobbled to pieces from separate cars) with a shoe, and then you try to explain to the person that that just doesn’t make sense they say that you’re being uncooperative and not explaining how the car works so you can make the shoe do the same.
Look, I’m not saying this is your case, but it feels like you’re approaching this the wrong way, you have a new solution without even understanding the current one. A better approach would be to gather the engineers and ask them what are THEIR problems with the system, and how would THEY like to fix them. If the Jira thing comes from higher ups tell them that this is a new requirement, but let THEM solve the technical issues, you are unlikely to be able to even if they explain them to you in detail.
Ok, so I AM asking the engineers that. But we need to be angle to track the implementations for each client, and that is why we are using JIRA. I’m very open to alternative ideas, but one of the problems is that teams involved are using salesforce, JIRA, and Azure, and this is causing a serious dearth of communication, as well as there being no way for anyone to get a bird’s eye view of where implementations currently stand. Frankly I have a lot more autonomy and control over this thing than anyone in this thread seems to be used to, so if people have better process ideas, I am all ears.
JIRA, and Atlassian
Since one makes the other, it’s like saying “Rav4 and Toyota”. I’m assuming you mean Confluence (aka Flatulence; or Confluenza for the stress-based sickness from watching the spinning please-wait-web-loading symbol too much).
using salesforce, JIRA, and [Confluence]
Quit it.
No one uses those tools; they get used by the tools. They’re slow, cloud-based, usually under-budgeted for the great gobby java blob-wrangling clown shows they are.
If you’re asking deadline-driven engineers to use a slow cloud app like that, with their caffeine levels, and invite real feedback without fear of penalty, you’re going to get some interesting opinions. Please, try to find something more usable for the non-deadline-helping work-tangents like documentation; which are important, but not on-fire-important like every other bloody thing on the list.
Sorry, meant Azure
Ok, so it seems that you’re only talking about managerial stuff, whether to use Jira or Atlassian, engineers don’t usually care about that, and there’s usually no technical reason to use one or the other, so it could be that you’re asking them to explain how a car works to try to figure out the best shoe to wear.
Also no one that’s not involved in the project will have better process ideas because we don’t know the process, and apparently neither do you from what you’re saying, it’s the thing the engineers “refuse” to explain to you. I think at the end of the day you need to sit down and explain what the higher ups want and listen to their ideas on how to get there.
explain what the higher ups want and listen to their ideas on how to get there
absolutely this… engineers want to help you design solutions… if you come to me and ask me to explain something so that you can design a solution that i’m then told to build you’re removing all the fun out of it and i ain’t gonna help with that
there’s a few things here that trigger red flags for me:
not worry about getting too detailed
oh good! because it’s probably ill-defined and nobody really knows and figuring that out involves a lot of reading other people’s shit code and we have work to do
because I need a very thorough understanding
oh you mean do worry - you want to know exactly how it works… sorry bud, no time, that’s a lot of energy
thoroughly documented
ugghghh documentation is for people that don’t understand that documentation is out of date the second you write it: don’t drag me into your futile attempt to make a static artifact that i’ll need to maintain in the future when i update a living system
eliminating all the uselessly disparate systems that people are trying to stitch together currently
okay but that’s really dismissive… this is work that people have put in - even if it’s shit and everyone knows it’s shit, it’s disheartening to have things thrown out… and what they do now they know how it works, they know the caveats… you’re talking about coming in, getting a cursory understanding (what you think you can understand everyone’s problem when the people that built the thing don’t have the full picture?) and then planning out and telling them what to do
if you want help from engineers, ask them for help to build a new thing: don’t ask them for help to explain something so you can tell them what to build. we’re creative, and we love solving problems and we hate robotically implementing someone else’s vision
In addition to what other people have said, “the technicals” and “getting too detailed” is ridiculously vague. There is always a too detailed. Software engineering is a giant world and engineers specialize, and even other engineers with a slightly different specialty don’t really want to know all your “technicals”.
Be specific about what details you’re interested in and why if you want to build trust. Demonstrate tangible investment in figuring out what your gaps are and ask specific questions, and be clear about what kind of answers you want. “Thorough understanding” is not helpful.
There is always a too detailed. Software engineering is a giant world and engineers specialize, and even other engineers with a slightly different specialty don’t really want to know all your “technicals”.
100%. I regularly have to tell DB or App people that I only need the high level answer because the details are immaterial to the discussion at hand. I might be personally interested, but I got shit to do…
A million times this.
hesitation because they’re worried about “incriminating” themselves
This is a hard one. Because this is not about engineers, but their nature as people.
An anecdote: A lawyer, once casually asked me - if I were to design a building (this was hypothetical, because I am not a civil engineer) and after construction, was to realise some mistake that would cost lives, would I go on to tell them about it - and his tone seemed like he considered it common sense that I won’t report it.
So, at least in his mind, it is common sense that people hide their mistakes.technical details
I am a kind of person that doesn’t know that people find it difficult to understand concepts out of their domain (mostly because I understand most, well explained stuff, irrespective of domain) and if someone were to ask me about my work, I would easily wander into the details. After a few years of industry experience, realising that to not be the case, I tend to be more abstract.
If you want the engineers to tell you more in depth about the technical stuff, I’d suggest you to show them your aptitude to understand their stuff and you will see them going more into detail of it. I had a manager (kind of), who was also an engineer and used Linux on a regular basis. I found it easy to discuss more in depth regarding solutions (the product was using Linux too) due to his familiarity.
As an engineer you learn to be very careful about what you say to non engineers.
A trivial example.
What if we make change x?
It’ll make some things harder and some things easier.
One week later.
Why are you having problems? You said doing x would make things easier.
More complicated example.
Can this be used for real time control?
Define real time.
Just answer the question.
I can’t it’s a bad question. I need to know what you are trying to control.
As a dev, this definitely triggered me a little.
