Historically Sitecore developers have enjoyed a relative monopoly on understanding Sitecore terminology and practices. Through its history as a Content Management System, already well-known terms were used and developers and business users alike were able to easily understand their common meaning. Terms like ‘workflow’, ‘security roles’, ‘templates’ etc were typically the domain of developers and little to no communication was required to translate these terms into the business domain, and there is little room for ambiguity in these terms.

With Sitecore’s growth into a Customer Experience Platform, this has changed with its expansion into the world of marketing and its associated (and ever growing) terminology. Now developers are tasked with working with marketers to help create campaigns, track interactions and sessions, manage goals and outcomes, and all of the little bits in between. Marketers likewise need to be able to communicate their requirements to developers, without having to explain the intricacies of their day to day jobs. Perhaps an even larger issue is the coming together of these two different worlds, and a dependency between them to ensure business value is being delivered.

The Sitecore UK Marketing Team recently ran a survey to look at some of the communication challenges faced between Marketers and Developers, which attracted over 150 responses. As might be expected, the survey highlighted a huge gap between developers and marketers, with an overwhelming 95% of respondents stating that they are struggling to bridge these differences. Perhaps more surprisingly, 85% of Marketers, and 95% of developers expressed frustration in working with developers and marketers respectively. This indicates a huge issue that can be causing frustration in development, misinterpreted requirements, and ultimately a reduction in the business value being delivered by both groups. Indeed, the differences can descend into vitriol and cyniscm between the groups, with each of them viewing the other as supercilious or arrogant and detrimental to delivery.

Here are some of the more eye-opening comments from the respondents (the survey was anonymous for the safety of everyone involved 🙂 –

From Developers:

• Self-importance, arrogant superiority
• speak in riddles, have no clue or understand about web systems, technology

From Marketers:

• Can be a sensitive bunch, easily misunderstood
• The penny dropping takes too long – they are the experts – all hail developers 😉

What is causing the friction?

The clear message from the survey is that a lack of communication makes it difficult for both groups to understand the other. From a marketers perspective, developers can favour the application of technology over its actual use to the customer, and can be secretive and less communicative than the average marketer. On the other hand, developers often feel marketers lack the technical knowledge they should, and tend to view things as much simpler than they actually are. For instance, a common theme among developers was that marketers tend to request features present on sites like Google and Facebook, and expect these to be simple additions.

To add to the complexity, the terminology between the groups is very different, which leads to confusion and misinterpretation. This can lead to added effort within any development, and in some cases can lead to even worse.

How can this be improved?

This issue is not new within software development. Issues like this have existed for years between software teams and the business. The issue arises from a lack of communication between the teams, which leads to developers having to make assumptions and interpretations from a given set of requirements. Likewise, since the business does not communicate with development teams except through a given set of requirements, they have no understanding of what’s actually involved. Therefore, all they would see is a requirement taking longer than it should (or longer than they think it should). A lack of communication during this process inevitably leads to lots of finger pointing when things don’t go to plan.

Recently, this issue has been rectified through the introduction of new Agile methodologies, and the idea of multi-disciplined self-organised teams. Using this method, marketers and developers should ideally be within the same team, aligned to a particular business domain (such as product or sales). Agile development and project management methodologies advocate collaboration and communication over process and documentation. This seems to be the answer to ensuring that marketers and developers can actually sit and speak about requirements, and crucially things can be tested quickly to see if they work.

Of course this is a huge topic and a big organisational change if your company isn’t already doing it, and doing this with Sitecore also brings its own considerations. Look out for my forthcoming blog post about organisation structures to support development. In the meantime I would highly encourage anyone to look into agile processes if they aren’t being done already: http://www.agilealliance.org/the-alliance/the-agile-manifesto/

Improve the Little Things

There are many more things that can be done as quick wins to start to bridge the gap;

Developers

• Ensure you speak to marketers for clarification of requirements where necessary
• Take time to teach them the platform and it’s uses
• Don’t assume knowledge
• Lean on architects to translate concepts between domains, including creating a common ontology
• Don’t try and contain knowledge, openly share knowledge and aim to educate others
• Bury your ego

Marketers

• Be aware of differing personalities and adapt your approach to suit (getting an organisation to use something like Myers-Briggs profiling really helps here)
• Involve developers in your ideation process
• Get developer feedback in your planning/scoping activities
• Ask for explanation’s where necessary and ensure developers are made aware if you don’t understand something

Ultimately if communication is improved, then both groups will have a greater understanding of the others activities, and new developments will be quicker and less prone to bugs. Clear communication will also reveal that both groups are actually not as far apart as you think, as evidenced by the survey.

What can Sitecore do?

Sitecore as a platform needs to cater to both developers and marketers, with the intention that both groups will be working on the platform in collaboration. Of course depending on how you approach development this may not be the case, but there are some things that every Sitecore developmer should insist on to aid understanding between groups;

• Ensure a common ontology for the core parts of your solution
• Utilise the Sitecore 8 Marketing Taxonomies to categorise marketing activities
• Use display names with associated validation to ensure friendly naming of items
• Develop SPEAK applications to cater for common business processes, simplifying them to the essentials of the process

What do you think, and what challenges you are facing in your teams? I’m Especially interested in hearing how you may have overcome these issues as well.