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What has worked for my (mostly) remote team is a mix of different tools for different communication needs: - Daily standups on Zoom. Each person's standup shou
by bennathanson 4y ago
What has worked for my (mostly) remote team is a mix of different tools for different communication needs:
- Daily standups on Zoom. Each person's standup should be short and to the point. Don't be afraid to tell people they're getting into the weeds. If more open-ended discussion needs to happen, interested parties should either 1) stick around after standup or 2) schedule a new meeting to discuss in greater depth 3) start a Slack thread to discuss.
- Weekly code syncs to go more in-depth as a team, make sure we're rowing in roughly the same direction, and knock out decisions in minutes that would take days on Slack. This is especially valuable when building new products or refactoring.
- Weekly office hours held by senior+ level engineers to give more junior engineers an opening to ask questions.
- Weekly architecture meetings to formally discuss sweeping technical changes that impact multiple teams in a meaningful way, e.g. migrating to a language
For me it has been less about "email bad" or "Slack good" and more about asking questions - "What is the right medium for this type of conversation and our culture as a team?" or "What is the right tool for the job?". It's also an answer that evolves as the team/company grows; you have to reassess every few months and make adjustments.
There's also a question of culture and setting expectations that might be at play here.
- For the people answering questions, are they passionate about teaching? Do they feel incentivized/recognized for being active in answering questions? Do they have the bandwidth to help others?
- Are those asking the questions asking good questions? Are they respecting the time and attention of those trying to help them?
- kazinator 4y agoWhy would you do standups on Zoom if you have Slack? Is it because you're running into the 15 person limit and need video (so cannot use huddles)?
- heretogetout 4y agoSlack huddles have poor ergonomics what with their use of global keyboard shortcuts. I avoid them whenever possible.
- CharlesW 4y agoHave you tried async standups via something like Geekbot? https://geekbot.com/ https://geekbot.com/
- krsrhe 4y agoIf it’s async, it’s not a standup, it’s something different, and far far better.
- CharlesW 4y agoWhat do you call that? “A-sync-up”?
- heretogetout 4y agoI haven't been in a position to proscribe process, I'm just a consumer. We have tried leaving messages in Slack but that process always ends in a matter of days from disinterest.
- kazinator 4y agoThe lack of a detached floating window for huddles compared to Slack calls is a big regression in functionality for me.
- bennathanson 4y agoGreat question! We do use huddles sometimes, especially when a Slack thread starts to get too deep. They're wonderful for pairing on problems. I'm sure we could migrate to huddles for standups if we really wanted to, there's just more momentum in Zoom meetings. But I will say that Zoom integrates nicely with Google Calendar, offers video, and like you said has a higher limit. We're also experimenting with doing standup three days a week so we can have less time spent in meetings each week.