Collaboration @ NiftyCo

[joshmanders]

Why?

There are two main ways for high-performing teams to collaborate:

1. Requiring high synchronization — Such as sitting in the same room to discuss / design things at length.
2. Providing high context — Providing clear channels of asynchronous collaboration and documentation for ongoing work and processes.

We all intuitively understand that working alone does not scale; but requiring high-sync does not scale well either, as its cost grows exponentially as teams grow larger.

One of our biggest challenges as a fast-growing startup will be scaling the way we collaborate. It's one of the key reasons why we have made the decision to build this company in a distributed manner. It's important that we all embrace it, and adjust or own work habits to succeed.

The key to making high-context environments work, is to provide automations through tooling. This is what this series attempts to explain.

Slack

Slack is where work conversations happen. Being on Slack is like being at the office. If you're working, you should be on Slack.

Your Profile

1. Take a minute to set an avatar on Slack to help people recognize you. Since Slack is used internally, it does not have to be an actual picture of you, as long as it's distinctive.
2. Your display name can be whatever you want, but it's usually best to use your first name or first name + last name so it's easier for people to find you and follow conversations.
3. Work / Life balance is important. Please setup your work hours in Slack.

How to use Slack

1. If you’re not sure which Slack channel to use, use the one with the largest audience.
2. Slack threads are good. Use them.
3. Instead of repeating something, you can share or quote existing slack messages. This works particularly well if you use threads.
4. If a conversation is going on too long (>30 messages with no clear consensus emerging), it may be better to jump on a Zoom call. You can start a Zoom call from inside Slack.

Zoom & Meetings

Zoom is where we can have conversations when Slack is no longer feasible.

1. Do not jump to scheduling a meeting or Zoom call right away. It’s usually best to try to resolve the issue in a Slack channel first.
   • The Rule of 3: If you find yourself having a conversation about the same topic more than 3 times, it’s usually a sign it’s a good idea to schedule a Zoom call instead.
   • The Rule of 30: for more informal conversations with a restricted group, it can be a good idea to move an ongoing Slack conversation to Zoom if the conversation has gone on for more than 30 messages, with no clear consensus emerging.
2. All meetings should have an agenda.
   • Agendas should be shared ahead of time, by adding a link to the document in the description section of the calendar invite

GitHub Org Discussions

This discussions tab on the org is our long form communication channel.

1. We will store all documents having to do with the company, best practices and processes in the 🧠 Knowledge Base category.
2. All company announcements will be in the 📣 Announcements category.
3. You can use the 💡Ideas category to share any ideas you may have.
4. Sometimes you may have something you'd love to show us, you can do that in the 🙌 Show and tell category.
5. If we have any general feedback needed, we may create a poll in the 🗳 Polls category.
6. And last but not least, all questions and answers can be posted in the 🙏 Q&A category.

GitHub Team Discussions

We have enabled Team Discussions and created teams for all of our projects. Feel free to utilize the discussion for any team you're on to have focused discussions pertaining to just that team.