Last Updated on March 30, 2018 by Neil Murray
Over the past few months, I have been working with a small (10 total with 4 developers) remote team. I noticed some comments creeping up on Slack that were along the lines of:
I'm exiting and logging out of Slack now so I can get some work done.
Then, the other day, the CEO (he is also a developer) was at his breaking point. He said:
Seriously, slack is a pathetic medium to get work done. Its equal to being on WhatsApp all day.
Slack is, arguably, the most popular tool used from small to large-sized companies for cross-team communication. What has been going wrong with our Slack team?
Slack Problems:
- Constantly being buzzed on my desktop and mobile device.
- Always seeing a notification that pulls my attention, distracting me.
- High priority questions getting lost in the noise.
- Lower priority discussions taking up time with responding.
- Long discussions with massive threads are hard to navigate.
As a team, we haven't yet come to a decisive answer on how to handle the above problems. However, I believe that each team is different in their communication style and we will need to adjust as CF7 Skins grows.
Communication is changing
The difficulty of remote, cross-team communication extends beyond process and available tools. It taps in directly to our cognitive evolution as a species.
Although most interactions are still offline, conversation and reading have essentially become more complex by going online or digital. We are suddenly immersed in new types of cognition during conversations where time and space seem to fold, or at least slightly bend. These new types of relational cognition add much to our lives.
Clifton Evans | Posted on March 20, 2018
http://boxesandarrows.com/changing-minds/
The feelings of distraction and lack of focus are possibly a direct result of our brain adapting to new forms of communication.
Is Slack the answer for CF7 Skins communication?
As a fully remote team, how we will we know what is being worked on, if you are out for the day (or week), and how will you help other teammates who might be stuck on a problem that you have the solution for. How will we convey customer issues and discuss potential solutions? Where will we document and record this information? How will we share our knowledge with each other across teams so that we can build better, design better, and become more well-rounded in our field?
I encourage everyone to think about the above questions as you are working and speaking with other teammates. I don't have the answer or solution to a future problem, however, we can begin to imagine what could work for us. We all benefit from shared information and open communication so let's keep it that way… while not getting distracted.