Slack and Communication Overload

As more teams are working remotely, communication is more important than ever. But few teams think about what information goes through which channel, they just add more channels. Slack, email, JIRA, Salesforce, and so on. But how much overlap is there between channels, and how little connection between them? A lot and very little.

This leads to an environment where people are spending time reiterating things that were discussed and decided in other channels. This is a clear violation of the Don't Repeat Yourself principle. There need to be clear rules and boundaries around what gets discussed on which channel.

Focus on actionable communication. Also, keep the focus on the takes to be solved. Tie those tasks to a development issue or project whenever possible. Assign the issue to a person to resolve and set a deadline for resolution or response. Discussion about how to do something can be done in other systems, but once the decision is made that should be linked to the underlying issue.

Really none of the systems we have in place today do this very well. They're either too generic, like email and Slack, or too specific, like JIRA. The ideal system would be based on development issues and planning, but allow discussion, planning and collaboration within the system. There should be clear visibility of what the question was, how is was solved and what was done.