Overcoming Communication Challenges of Working in a Multicultural Environment
Elias Michel El Khoury, MBA, PMI-ACP
Technical Director - Software Engineering at Beytek SAL Offshore | MBA, PMI ACP
One of the biggest challenges that a team member could face in a multicultural environment is maintaining good communication with the customer and with the team.
In this article, I will cover three challenges that a product owner in an agile team could face in normal circumstances:
- Language barrier in international teams
- Difference in points of view
- Inaccurate detailing of business requirements
I believe the language barrier should not be an issue if the team member is a fluent English speaker, because English is spoken by more than 90% of multicultural software teams in the world.
As for the difference in points of view, many techniques can be used such as voting and listening to each other. But at the end, it is the product owner’s job to conclude to the direction that gives the highest value for the customer and the business. Otherwise, the agile team may create features that are not appreciated or insufficiently valuable, therefore wasting effort.
Finally, the inaccurate detailing of business requirements; It should be tackled from both ends: The sponsor and the team.
On the sponsor side, clearly understanding the requirements is crucial and sometimes techniques such as job shadowing, workshops and focus groups are needed.
On the team side, writing the requirements in a non-ambiguous way is mandatory. They should be clearly worded and sufficiently detailed so that everything is known.
However, our world today is far from normal, because since COVID-19 invaded the world, physical meetings became virtual, and face-to-face conversations became behind screens.
In fact, I have been holding virtual meetings for the last 5 years and there were a few tricks that I learned, to make the virtual meetings efficient and enjoyable. Virtual meetings should always have an agenda and team members need to have a clear purpose and know what is expected from them.
What can the company do?
The company should also play a role in addressing these concerns. It could be by equipping the team with the right collaboration tools and backlog management tools, by putting a communication management plan, and finally by hiring only employees whose cultures align with the company’s culture.