Like it or not, there is always a heavy social aspect to software development. We’re all about providing value, and if we can’t understand and get along with the people we’re providing value to, we’re doomed to fail.

While this article, Making Stakeholders Love You, is from a designer’s perspective, everything that’s said in there is completely relevant to a professional software developer.

Yes, stakeholders plural aren’t really a thing well defined in agile - you’ve got a product owner that should be the key stakeholder, managing the expectations and the desires of the stakeholders as a whole - the reality is, you’ll likely still interact with stakeholders and other interested parties in the business, and that’s something you should embrace. Transparency and understanding is good, and will help you deliver the best product, and the most value that you can, keeping everyone happy and positive along the way.

So: yes, the above article is written for designers, but like I said: the salient points hold true for software professionals.

Essentially, it comes down to some no nonsense advice (and this is me paraphrasing): be professional, be empathetic, lose the ego, and be open and transparent. Us software people are problem solvers, and we need to understand the people, their perspectives, and the problem space in order to best solve those particular problems.

Anyway, go read the article. It’s good.

Until next time.