Communication Patterns

Part IV. Communicating Remotely

Many modern teams are distributed in nature, either fully remote or hybrid, and can be spread across the globe. Creating software products in this environment requires different communication patterns than for a group of people sharing the same room and whiteboard. Whether you are communicating with colleagues, customers, or other businesses, you need to consider many factors, including time, work patterns, culture, inclusivity, and the channels you use to communicate.

Distributed communication has advantages and disadvantages compared to in-person. You can exploit or mitigate these to get the best outcomes for your teams and organization by applying the patterns and techniques presented in Part IV.

Before you dive in, I want to define synchronous and asynchronous communication, which are covered in depth throughout the following chapters:

• Asynchronous communication does not assume or expect the recipient to pick up or respond to the message as soon as it is received. This type of communication usually completes within hours or days, as opposed to seconds or minutes.¹

• Synchronous communication relies on all parties being available at the same time and responding in real time. This type of communication completes within seconds or minutes.

¹ By completes, I mean that the message is received and understood, and any needed response is sent, received, and understood.