Slack Harms Projects

6 points by SilasReinagel 6 years ago | 5 comments

takeout 6 years ago |

I disagree for many reasons, but chief among them is that Slack is a tool, like email or JIRA are tools, to communicate between members of a team. The culture around that communication is what makes these tools useful. If a company bases their culture around real time communication and organizes both their communication tool and company accordingly, a lot of these problems disappear. Multiple channels and project channels can ensure that only relevant people get notifications. And 10 years ago, people were complaining about the constant pinging of email as a distraction from work. You can close or mute Slack!

One thing you don't mention here is the usefulness of RTC tools for remote work. I work remotely, and I can't imagine only interacting with my co-workers through email or a ticket interface. It is, for me and my company, not at all conducive to the type of innovation that makes our work successful. I think RTC tools are the closest remote employees can get to "Hey X, can I grab you for a second?" Emails are too formal, tickets are even more so. Slack is perfect for this kind of communication.

Side note: at my co., big tickets or ideas get sent in emails. You don't have to use just one tool!

SilasReinagel 6 years ago | |

Tools shape the culture, which then shape the tools.

Yes, if you want a workplace where people can say "Hey X, can I grab you for a second?" then RTC is exactly what you want.

When I worked full-time remote, we didn't work that way because it felt very invasive. We scheduled meetings for later or the next day. This create a more intentional pace of work and promoted a culture of thoughtfulness.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

angryasian 6 years ago | |

For RTC tools, I still prefer video chat over slack. Text is way too easily misconstrued and I think especially working remotely voice/face is better for building the type of collaboration you want between the team.

PaulHoule 6 years ago | |

Many ticket systems are awful for reasons other than being ticket systems.

For instance there are all the JIRA installations that have more options to make a ticket than there are dials at the flight engineer's station on a 747 in the 1970s. There are the issue trackers that run on a server that has too little RAM so it takes 30 seconds to load that bloated "create ticket" page.

I think making something more fluent than the typical issue tracker but more structured than slack would be the way to go.

SilasReinagel 6 years ago | | |

I agree with this completely.

Having a good ticket system makes a world of difference.

If it's slow, or clunky, or buggy, or cumbersome, then the ticket system itself harms the projects and prevents progress.

At lot of usage of Jira falls precisely in this category.