Tech#19: Identify team communication problems via “communication distance”

Gerold Keefer, in a paper "Project Success Prediction Based on Communication Reliability Analysis"  suggests that the effectiveness of a teams communication can be assessed in 2 dimensions: Reliability and Distance.

Communication Reliability is well understood.

However the concept of Communication Distance is novel and could be very useful for virtual teams.

Distance attempts to measure how much is getting in the way of our team communications due to various factors.

The greater this ‘distance’ the more chance of miscommunications.

Gerold suggests 5 factors which contribute to Communications distance in software engineering teams :

1. Geography
2. Clarity of Focus
3. Team Cohesion
4. Team Experience
5. Process Capability

The concept of communications distance could be applied to any kind of team and the factors which contribute to it defined accordingly.