This is one of the things I’ve been working on teaching my own team since I got onboard. There’s two hard lessons that kept coming up in the past for them:

1) If you build it, but they don’t know what it is, they won’t come.

2) If you do something, but you don’t tell anyone, it’s the same as if you didn’t do it.

Since we’ve got the communication going, they’re seeing a big difference. People want to play with the new toys they build :)

Having strong technical chops, by itself, is definitely not enough. You have to be able to apply them to the right problems (communication) and then you have to make sure they’re adopted (more communication).

Reminds me of my MechE days, when someone said “It’s a great design, but we can’t build it!” Well then, not such a great design, huh?

Keep it up,
Scott