Your cross-functional team is divided on programming languages. How will you navigate this challenge?

Developers are like knights defending their king. They will "die" for the language they love (usually the first they learned in all honesty). But if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You need to be open to new languages and technologies as some frameworks are better suited to certain tasks than others. (It's never really about the language, but about the APIs and frameworks available in a given language).

To navigate a divided cross-functional team on programming languages, start by ensuring everyone understands the project requirements. Understand Requirements: Review project objectives together. Hold a Meeting: Facilitate open discussions on preferred languages and their pros and cons. Analyze Needs: Evaluate factors like performance and team expertise to identify suitable languages. Consider Multiple Languages: Choose different languages for frontend and backend components if needed. Reach Consensus: Aim for a consensus and document the decision for team alignment.

1. Assess Project Needs: Identify key requirements such as scalability, maintainability, and integration. 2. Gather Stakeholder Input:Collect requirements from all relevant stakeholders. 3. Map Requirements to Languages: Evaluate how different languages meet these needs. 4. Use a Criteria Matrix: Score languages based on requirements, long-term implications, and community support. 5. Align with Goals: Ensure the chosen language aligns with project goals and supports future needs.

I'd start by understanding the project’s non-negotiables—things like performance needs, platform requirements, or specific libraries that dictate a language. Then, I’d look at strengths, what the team already knows well; familiarity can speed up development and reduce mistakes. I’d open up a discussion to hear different perspectives, making sure everyone understands we’re balancing the "ideal" tool with what we can realistically do given our timeline and expertise. If needed, we could consider a mix of languages to play to our strengths without adding too much complexity. Once a decision is made, I'd document & explain the rationale, make sure the team is on board, and support any learning that’s necessary. Conduct retrospectives.

You also need to consider any direct, or indirect, contractual needs. 1. The contract may directly specify programming language(s). 2. The contract may specify compatibility with, or the user of, language specific tools or testing. 3. The contract may specify specific platform(s) - not all tools are are available on all platforms. There may also be overriding company or legal restrictions such as no use of GPL components.

- Leverage Expertise: Recognize and value the diverse skills each team member brings. - Encourage Sharing: Have developers present their hands-on experience with various languages. - Foster Open Discussion: Promote respectful dialogue to explore strengths and limitations. - Gain Comprehensive View: Use insights to understand how each language aligns with project needs. - Promote Collaboration: Ensure the decision benefits from collective knowledge and expertise.

Identify tools and frameworks that enable different languages to work together smoothly, ensuring seamless integration. Ultimately, balance flexibility with technical efficiency while keeping the project’s objectives at the forefront.

You should also list out your teams current skill set - while many developers are keen to add new, fashionable, languages to their CVs allowing this desire to prevail will add a serious overhead to your project.

Always ask for feedback! Not everyone is ready or willing to present a new idea, though they may be more willing to provide input on the things they’ve been presented.

That's a very interesting case and, opportunity.For every new project/task, having good knowledge in more than one tool/language is very nice based in the fact that each language has a focus, even the general purpose ones. Making workshops, showing market use cases using the languages and improving the team's knowledge makes possible to do the better solution for every challenge that the teams needs to overcome.

I have seen many architects making such choices, while the team is able to make these choices themselves perfectly. You only have to make sure the options are there for good reasons and not because someone just loves the language. There are always people that easily override others with their opinion. So make sure there is a good list with all pros and cons and a valid decision is made.

A team can make valuable suggestions on which programming language to use. However, it depends on the project which is (or are) best and should be used for which part. In the end, it should be the responsible architect as team- and projectmanager who decides, preferrably after listening to the team. Making such decisions is what an architect is being paid for.

One of the most fundamental ways you can resolve conflicts on programming languages is to do research on what's popular in the industry and what the industry wants. Technology is a rapidly-changing field with new technologies, languages, and frameworks being invented every day. Therefore, it would be best to do research on the most popular frameworks, propose solutions with a detailed analysis on the research, and then take a vote on what the team prefers based on business needs. By doing this, teams can easily resolve conflicts on languages by weighing the pros and cons of each new technology discovered.

It is essential to set time limits on such considerations and to make that time limits very clear and agreed. Otherwise you will burn up all of your projects schedule and budget with arguments or discussions. It may be possible to identify a small subset of the project features that can be implemented & evaluated within a prototyping phase and then to revisit the question of language(s).

However it is essential to make clear any restrictions and how the ranking is going to work. I have worked on projects where the entire team was expert in an elderly, unsupported, language that they would have preferred to use but the customer would not except. There may also be practical limitations that the team are reluctant to consider. Start any meeting or workshop by laying out these limitations any why they have to be considered.

Getting standards, guidelines, processes and importantly templates in place as early as possible is essential. It is important to remember that this is a process and that these things are themselves subject to improvement & evolution as the project progresses. There may already be such items available at the company level or from other teams. If they do not exist then try to ensure that you set the standard by not making your items too project specific and disseminate your work.