Ixchel Ruiz

Years ago, a good doctor knew it all, did it all: set a fracture, performed surgery, drew blood. A good doctor was independent and self-sufficient, and autonomy was highly valued.

Fast forward to today. Knowledge has exploded, surpassing the individual and bringing about specialization. In order to provide an adequate solution from beginning to end, many specialists will be involved, and different teams will have to interact.

This is true in software development as well.

Cooperation is now one of the highest-valued traits in “good” professionals. In the past, independence and self-sufficiency was enough to be “good.” Now we all need to behave like pit crews: team members.

The challenge is to build teams that are both successful and diverse.

Four types of diversity—industry background, country of origin, career path, and gender—positively correlate with innovation. In a homogenous team, regardless of academic background, there may be redundant perspectives. Women, for example, bring disruptive innovation.

How big is the impact? In management teams with a high gender diversity, an increase of 8% in revenue from innovation has been observed.

Differences among group members can also be a source of insight—members with different backgrounds, experiences, and ideas increase the pool of information, skills, and networks. With more perspectives, reaching consensus requires constructive debate. If the environment where ideas are exchanged is positive, creative solutions will emerge naturally.

But increasing group diversity is not an easy task.  Conflict can arise when heterogeneous groups don’t communicate effectively or divide themselves into factions. People prefer to collaborate with those similar to them. A close-knit group will develop its own language and culture, and outsiders will be distrusted. Distance, along with the pitfalls of mishaps in digital communication, make software teams especially prone to the problems of “us versus them” and incomplete information.

So how do we get the benefits of diversity and avoid the drawbacks?

The key in collaboration is developing psychological safety and trust within your team. 

When we are surrounded with people we can trust, even if they are different from us, we’re more confident to take risks and experiment. When we trust each other, we can look to others to provide information or perspective that will help solve a challenging problem, thus creating opportunities for cooperation. We can overcome vulnerable situations when feedback is requested.

In teams with psychological safety, it’s easier for people to believe that the benefits of speaking up outweigh the costs. Participation leads to less resistance to change, and the more frequently people participate, the more likely they are to offer novel ideas.

Personality matters in software development, too; it’s equally important to build an environment of trust for different personalities. We all have a colleague who is willing to test every new library, framework, or tool, someone thinking how to use or explore the new shiny red toy, sometimes with surprising results. Some are inclined to establish new processes, code format styles, or templates for commit messages, and will remind us when we are not following proper procedure. You may have teammates who will underpromise and overdeliver, and ones who are thinking of everything that can go wrong: updating dependencies, installing patches, security risks, etc. Consider everyone’s differences, and don’t push too hard.

We can increase diversity in our teams in two dimensions: background and personality. If we have good team dynamics and continue to build trust in each other, we will be more successful as programmers.