Frankly, it’s tiresome trying to describe technical details with business analysts who glaze over something you’re passionate about, treating it like nerdsprak. If the engineer has spent any amount of time producing a solution, you can bet he’s passionate and invested. Give credit where credit is due and don’t sound like an obnoxious condescending douchbag when doing so. People can tell when a disinterested person is giving fake praise. It’s quite different when a crowd of peers is giving recognition of a job well done. And no, you’re probably not as smart as they are in their field of expertise.

Also, listen to their input. They don’t want a product with their name going live with a feature the bean counters want, but the engineers know make the product worse. It’s like a mom watching your daughter to go to prom with a cheap haircut because dad as too cheap to fork out for a perm. You know what I mean.

Anecdote from my first job (software engineering): New manager wants to know what our team does and how our process and software works. Like, he really really wants to know it!

Okay, I book a timeslot and prepare some slides and an example; we have a meeting. I go over the high level stuff, getting more and more specific. (Each person on our team was responsible for end-to-end developing bootloaders for embedded HW.) When I got to the SW update process and what bit patterns the memory needs to have and how the packets of data are transmitted, he called off the meeting and I’ve never seen him since.

I guess, he didn’t want to know THAT much after all.

As a software developer that’s worked on a ton of legacy, home-grown, years old software systems, they may not be dodging the nitty gritty…they frankly don’t know it.

Some of the systems I’ve had to work on were over a decade old and being maintained or patched by anybody that had a free minute(as in over 150 individual contributors over its life, 75% of which are no longer employed). So while I know what the main goal of the system is there are a bunch of little side responsibilities that nobody knows about. Like we need this thing but nobody will stick it on a roadmap or prioritize it so I’ll just stick it in here as a bug fix. Now multiply that over however long that spaghetti bowl of code has been around for. So that means that code isn’t documented, and likely doesn’t have a ticket in Jira(because you mentioned it) explaining why it exists at all. So that leaves a lot of questions. Chances are your devs have come across some code like this and know they don’t know what it does and expect to find more if they look. Tracking down why all that junk exists and if its still required can take a staggering amount of time. Trying to juggle that with your day to day is…not practical. So unless some time gets blocked out to actually answer those questions I find it unlikely that you’ll get what you need.

If you are saying things like ‘I’m not interested in punishing anyone for past decisions or mistakes’, I think I can see the problem.

I’m an engineer for past 20 years ,and the moment I get a whiff of some biz person fluffing bullshit I check out. Not saying you’re like that but something to be mindful of

So be real, honest, straightforward, put in effort into understanding the technicals so youre not just a sales annoyance or engineers will write you off right away IMO

Also I don’t think some people realize how busy or hard engineering can be. I’ve been working my ass off on a ground up new product and a lot of stuff just falls to the wayside out of lack of time

There’s also !askelectronics@discuss.tchncs.de !engineering@sh.itjust.works among others

Real life mechE here. I’ll tell you how my brain works.
99% of the time when I get an odd request from outside of the department, it goes one of many ways:

• the request is literally not in my scope of work and I let them sit for a day or two and then politely deny with a CC to my manager.
• the request is so vaguely worded that I could give a 2 sentence answer or a 20 page pdf answer or a PowerPoint full of flowcharts, and all would be “right”, leaving me in a state of decision paralysis and needing clarification.
• the request is something I can help with but I don’t know your technical capability levels, so I try to keep it very generic and high level as to not simply knock you over with a technical dictionary.
• the request is in my scope of work and very doable, but I do not want to inadvertently share information that I may not be allowed to divulge freely to other parts of the company.
  And of course, there’s a lot of CYA reluctance too depending on what’s being asked.

If you’re asking first or second level engineers things like “how does your technical work flow do it’s thing?” you are starting at the wrong level for a documentation project of this massive scope. Engineers have managers whose job is to translate requests into technical terms and figure out who is the best at doing what. That’s what mine does: he takes a super weirdly worded ECR (engineering change request) and translates them into technical steps and clear direction for me. Then I can pick out the details needed to make it happen, confirm them, and document them.

You need to define clear needs out of your request: start with your end goal, the processes you need, the mechanical details of the processes you need to write, how much detail you are comfortable with, and the format in which you want it . and take all of that to the senior or director level of whatever department manages those systems. They may or may not know the exact information you need, but it should be their job to delegate and translate the request such that their reports can collate what you need in the form that you need it. And because it’s the director delegating, the engineers have inherent CYA and will be a lot more comfortable giving you what you need.

Accept “I have no idea” as an answer, and don’t use it as an opportunity to push things in the direction you want.
learn to account for people being wrong, and don’t punish them for it.

Engineers want to be accurate. They don’t want to give answers that they’re unsure about or just speculating.
Early in their careers they’re often willing to, but that gets beaten out of them pretty quickly by people with deadlines. Expressing uncertainty often means the person interprets the answer in the direction they want, and then holds the engineer to that answer.
“It could be anywhere from 2-8 months I think, but we won’t know until we’re further into the design phase” is taken as 2 months, planned around, and then crunch Time starts when it starts to go over. Or revising an estimate once new information or changing requirements are revealed is treated as incompetence, even though more work taking more time is expected.

It’s in the self interest of the engineer to be cagey. “I don’t like to give estimates this early” is much harder to turn into a solid commitment than an earnest best estimate given the current known state of the project.

Similar for resources required or processes. Anything you don’t say is unlikely to be held against you.

My experience is you get the best response if they understand why you need the information and at what level of detail. They seem to respond well to clarity, organization and logic (who doesn’t!), so prepare your communications to include the background they need (how does your request help them in the long run), what it is you need from them (and in what format), and when you need it by. Trust is built by demonstrating your value to them. Think about ways you can help them get the info to you (start the work for them, book time on their calendars to focus on the request, sit with them and help them produce the info).

Side note: engineers sometimes offer information that is not executive ready - you will either need to translate or tell the engineer who the audience is for the information.

After reading your replies, I am on edge.

Please consider the following questions.

What is the power dynamic?
Are there good reasons to stonewall you?

What happened to the first few teams you worked with? Did the engineers involved advance in their careers? Do they talk with you still? What about their prior interactions with your team and department? Do those engineers still work at the company?

If you are confident you are there to help then just speaking to them like people. Don’t bullshit them. Push them up in their careers when you can. Get them what resources you can. Support them in their goals. Do a good job and you won’t get them to shut up.

Had a similar experience at a job. One source of resistance I found was engineers knowing upper management had absolutely no stomach for the type of change that the company desperately needed. This would lead to them likely not implementing anything meaningful. So rather than waste their time helping me and getting on board with the changes, they just kept churning out the same trash and questioned why I hadn’t made all their lives better.

Everyone wants change so long as they don’t have to be the ones to change.

Talk less, listen more.

They’re probably (no offense) nerds, so let them nerd out and listen to them.

Then actually act on what they say, and soon they’re be telling you more shit than you want to know.

My husband is an engineer. Screaming, “what the fuck are talking about?” is probably not the way.

I’m a software developer, and I sometimes if I’m asked how something works, I can find it difficult to explain things in a way that would make sense to the listener, whether they are a PM or the client.

Other times, depending on the question, I simply don’t know the answer, and it could take hours for me to gain enough understanding of the project to even respond intelligently.

I’m not an engineer, but I work in IT and work with engineers, analysts, and management. I have no idea what your knowledge or background is, but the engineers may be reluctant to get too technical in fear of talking over your head. I would make clear to them that you need specific, technical details and not to worry about to much jargon. If they’re reluctant for other reasons, it may be an issue for your management to address.

This post is a little too vague to give real advice. You don’t tell us what industry you’re in. You don’t tell us if the engineers are the end users of the software or processes you’re working on, or if they will implement the software or processes you’re working on.

If they’re the end users, they might be concerned that the changes you’re designing are going to make their jobs harder. A lot of changes in the past couple decades aimed at “efficiency” have involved making people take on more work for no additional pay, then firing the administrative staff or other engineers who used to do that work. Even if that isn’t the sort of project you’re working on they are reasonably wary based on past experience. Or maybe it’s not clear to you how this will make their life harder but management will find a way.

If the engineers are writing the software that you are helping design, how are you helping to make their jobs easier and more fulfilling? It’s an unfortunate fact that software engineers are sometimes treated like misbehaving vending machines that will produce software if you force them to. If they are writing the code, there’s a very good chance that they know more about this process than anyone else in the room, but are they treated like they know more than anyone else in the room? Is their expertise valued or are they treated like roadblocks when they give their expert opinions?