5 Aspects of Effective Engineering Feedback

The below screenshot highlights a conversation between StartupLandia team developer Gabriel Rascovit and the CEO of HappiLabs, Tom Ruginis.

I’ve selected this screenshot because it highlights 5 things that lead to effective communication between engineering implementors and business stakeholders.

Let’s break down what we are looking at and why it matters.

  1. “I’m working on the eta backordered filter and I thought” → Gabriel provides awesome context about what he is doing, without linking Tom to another card, or ticket or external something.
  2. “Perhaps a toggle switch would be better to indicate” → Gabriel offers a slight change of course than what had previously been designated during ticket writing.
  3. “What’s your opinion” → Feedback enabling question.
  4. “Push play to see this live” → no logging in, no going somewhere else, not having to work to see or understand the option being presented.
  5. “Questions: 1 & 2” “Answers 1 & 2” → Gabriel does an excellent job of mirroring the communication needs of Tom.

To Reframe this Communication Pattern, we might say that effective engineering communication (specifically around feature feedback) happens when…

  1. Establishment of clear context for feedback
  2. Statement of feature for evaluation
  3. Solicitation of feedback
  4. Offering of tangible object to review
  5. Bulleted feedback that can be reduced to yes/no states of completion.

BONUS FOR: Asking questions that Tom could answer throughout the day, not requiring perfect time syncronicity between the two parties, yeah! :)

Seemingly small details add up over time, especially details that ensure the right interface gets built and only the right interface ever makes it to production. Gabriel Rascovit, a native Portuguese speaker from Goiânia, Brazil, demonstrates expert product feedback communication patterns. The StartupLandia team attempts to foster a culture of effective, user driven engineering feedback. Please reach out to us if you are curious to learn about our design driven product engineering culture.

Cheers,

JD