Giving feedback to colleagues, or vice versa is an essential part of a team working. But, of course, working in teams or with colleagues doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be easy and fun all the time. Sometimes team members disagree on one or more things, or they need an extra push to get the job done. Other times it is only a matter of giving each other support. Whatever the case might be, providing feedback about anything is always valuable.
It is not any different in the software world. It is vital to give your college some support and honestly tell if something can be made better, as a positive critic. But how? These situations aren’t always simple.
We will see here the easiest way to go through when giving a peer feedback software engineer real and honest opinions and suggestions. So let’s start at the beginning with the first software engineer feedback example.
Prepare
You don’t want to do anything unprepared, especially not giving feedback. Before giving your colleague software engineer feedback, first, go through what your goals are at the end of this conversation. What are you trying to achieve? This is one of the most important parts because it will be easier to find a way to achieve that goal by determining what you want. And even more significant is that if you prepare well, you will be more focused when presenting the feedback to your colleague.
Feedback Sandwich
This heading has an opposing goal, meaning don’t use the feedback sandwich. It means that you mustn’t give many good compliments while giving feedback because your colleague won’t listen to the bad stuff, and they probably won’t even know what you are trying to do. For example, by giving two or more compliments while you are trying to provide constructive feedback, sometimes the person you are talking to can concentrate only on the good stuff. In the end, they will think that you are actually complimenting them. This is one of the most important feedback for developers’ examples.
Have a Two Way Conversation
This is always valuable, but especially when talking to more inexperienced coworkers. The best feedback for junior developer example is to have a two-way conversation.
More experienced engineers sometimes think they shouldn’t allow the younger colleague to give their opinion. This is a mistake. Many times young and ambitious engineers can have exciting ideas that might be used or at least thought about. So don’t hesitate to talk to each other, at the end the point is to come up with a better solution rather than only criticizing your team member.
Avoid Texting
The worst thing you could do is to give feedback by text. Of course, this is good if there is no other option, and then you should choose your words wisely. But if possible, do it in person, or at least at a video conference. One on one meetings can be very helpful because it is a lot more personal and all the body language will give you a perspective of where you should stop or push further in the conversation.
Put Yourself In Their Shoes and Don’t Judge Them
The point of giving feedback is not to judge your colleague. Always focus on the problem, never on the person. The best relationship to have with a coworker is to have an environment in which you can speak openly about the work, and when you finish, you still don’t have a problem at all having a cup of coffee or lunch. Things mustn’t be personal at all. Also, when giving feedback, try to put yourself in their shoes. That way, you will have more empathy and understand how you would react when someone else will provide you with constructive feedback about your working efforts.
Conclusion
Don’t pick only one feedback for a software developer example and think that you can get away with it. Instead, use all of them because giving good feedback to a colleague is a mix of all these tips in order to achieve the goal by not insulting anyone. The point is to get better, but also keep the relaxing team working atmosphere.
The ideal situation in a co-working field is to get the job done while maintaining excellent team chemistry.
