Informal Networks: Trust No Process Can Install - Yuliia Pieskova

How Informal Connections Drive Success in Software Development and Testing

In this episode, I talk with Yuliia Pieskova about informal networks in software teams. We explore how spontaneous ties lift trust, speed, and quality in remote and hybrid setups. Formal charts set limits, people move work through friends. Yuliia shares stories from startups, hackathons, and product discovery where cross team groups watch users, swap ideas, then return with shared context. Remote work exposes old cracks yet levels locations and opens doors for new links.

"Anytime we get to some team, we get to some group of people, we become a part of that informal network and that also influences our behavior." - Yuliia Pieskova

Yuliia Pieskova is the co-founder of Alpha Affinity, a data startup, as well as a Certified Agile and Organizational Coach and consultant with over 13 years of IT experience in operational and leadership roles. She has successfully guided startups through scaling journeys, building distributed international product teams from the ground up, and has collaborated with corporations like SimCorp and SAP on complex transformations and change management initiatives. As a contributor to Agile Alliance and a keynote speaker, Yuliia drives forward-thinking discussions on Agile practices, remote work, and emerging technologies. She also designs and delivers AI workshops and training sessions, empowering leaders and coaches with practical tools to seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows.

Highlights:

• Informal networks run parallel to formal org structures and carry more weight in crises because they are built on trust, which formal processes cannot manufacture.
• Remote and hybrid work scale existing cultural problems rather than create new ones: teams that already had trust adapted more easily, teams that lacked it struggled harder.
• Product discovery improves when people from different backgrounds, including newcomers who carry no product history, learn from user feedback together and then return to their teams already aligned.
• Explicit alignment conversations, where team members openly discuss what good collaboration looks and feels like for them, prevent misunderstandings that would otherwise surface as conflict under pressure.
• Introverted team members form fewer but often higher-quality relationships, and a well-designed environment such as a hackathon gives them space to connect on their own terms without forced participation.

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