Solved: The Engineering Problem, or What to Do If You Don’t Know How to Talk to People?

Understanding the Communication “Engineering Problem”

Engineers often struggle with interpersonal communication, manifesting as technical issues like rework and inefficient incident response. This post addresses this ‘engineering problem’ by advocating for structured communication frameworks, comprehensive documentation, and active listening techniques to enhance team collaboration and project delivery.

Why This Matters

While engineers strive for elegant code and robust systems, poor communication is a common failure point. Unaddressed communication breakdowns lead to costly rework, siloed knowledge, and extended incident resolution times, potentially costing organizations significant time and resources. A single major outage can easily exceed $1 million in losses, highlighting the financial impact of ineffective communication.

Key Insights

• IMPACT/SBAR protocols: Structured communication frameworks significantly improve incident response efficiency.
• Documentation as Code: Comprehensive documentation (READMEs, ADRs) reduces knowledge silos and onboarding time.
• Standardized Templates: GitHub Issue and Pull Request templates streamline code reviews and reduce communication overhead.

Working Example

#incident-channel
@channel Incident Update:
**I (Incident):** Frontend service experiencing high latency and 5xx errors for `portal.example.com`.
**M (Measurable Impact):** ~30% of user requests failing. Business impact: Users cannot access core dashboard functionality.
**P (Problem):** Suspect recent deployment `commit-abc123` on `web-app-v2` service. Increased error rates observed immediately after rollout.
**A (Actions Taken/Taking):**
1. Rolled back `web-app-v2` to previous stable version `commit-xyz987`.
2. Monitoring error rates and latency metrics.
3. Investigating logs for `commit-abc123` for root cause.
**C (Communications):** Internal team only. No external comms yet.
**T (Time/ETA):** Rollback completed. Expect recovery within 5-10 minutes. Will provide next update in 15 mins or upon full resolution.

Practical Applications

• Use Case: A DevOps team at Netflix utilizes detailed post-mortem documentation (ADRs) after each incident to share learnings and prevent recurrence.
• Pitfall: Relying solely on verbal communication during incidents leads to miscommunication, delayed resolution, and incomplete post-incident analysis.

References:

• https://dev.to/techresolve/solved-the-engineering-problem-or-what-to-do-if-you-dont-know-how-to-talk-to-people-23ai