The author is talking about publicly viewable emails and chats (e.g. mailing lists, IRC, Slack). I think the surrounding context makes that clear: "When talkin

The author is talking about publicly viewable emails and chats (e.g. mailing lists, IRC, Slack). I think the surrounding context makes that clear: "When talking about a team that is not producing work fast enough, look at the records. Look at the team chats and emails, look at the tickets, look at the repository code reviews and checkins."