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.

  • indomara@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    23 hours ago

    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.