Axelerant is a remote organization, and we have to must be deliberate about how we communicatecommunicating. This guide is our attempt to normalize the types of communication we have our communication types at Axelerant.
How to use this document?
Regularly skim through this guideline to remind yourself of what kind of communication is expected of youwe use. And, feel free to link to multiple sections of this guide when in conversation with an intent to either:
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When you think any of these sections could use improvement, go ahead and edit this page. However, be mindful that you are improving the document and not bringing in contrasting views without discussing it with the team first.
This document is not a battlefield.
Underlying principles
As a remote organization, Axelerant prefers to err on the side of over-communication at all times. Moreover, all public and group conversations falling under Axelerant's Axelerant’s scope of reach must be in English.
When communicating, aim first for clarity and then for brevity. The intent behind all All these principles is aim to ensure the entire Axelerant team's team’s inclusion in all conversations that affect them, even if in the slightest.
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Axelerant is a globally distributed organization, and our customers are primarily from English-speaking territories. Therefore, all our team members must communicate effortlessly in English.
Clarity over Brevity
When you can make Make your message shorter while keeping it approachable and clear to everyone involved (and in most cases, that is the entire Axelerant team), do that. Otherwise, it is preferable to elaborate your sentence, give detailed examples, and even repeat yourself to make sure that ensure the message is clear.
Modes of communication
Axelerant utilizes various communication tools that are on the spectrum of synchronous communication to asynchronous. Here is a non-exhaustive list of tools we use along this spectrum.
Asynchronous Tools
Email
Confluence
Google Docs
Hybrid Communication (of asynchronous & synchronous)
Slack
Jira
Synchronous Tools
Zoom
Telephone
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It is far easier to reason about tools that fall neatly in the category of asynchronous communication or synchronous than those in the middle of the spectrum. As such, this document will dwell more on the hybrid forms of communication, which, not surprisingly, form a bulk of the communications volume at Axelerant. But it is easier to get the simpler getting the more uncomplicated cases out of the way firstis easier.
Asynchronous communication
This communication style of communication is characterized by longer messages and longer gaps between responses and topics.
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In the case of the Engineering team, it is mostly mainly used for customer communication in cases where we have not onboarded the customer on Slack. Other departments, such as sales, would utilize email more often.
Regardless of the frequency of usage, standard conventions apply to the email, language, and format structure. As is the case with letter writing, structure your email into clear paragraphs not exceeding three. When your email is longer than 3 three paragraphs, rethink whether it should be a document or some other form of a post.
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Confluence is Axelerant’s platform of choice for broad communication with the whole of Axelerant. This is the home of our handbook, which includes guidelines and policies (such as this one) and meeting notes for various projects. Follow the spirit of knowledge sharing and use your judgment to determine how to structure your content in any Confluence Space.
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Google Docs is a place for documents that need heavy collaboration and other temporary needs. Except in a few cases, a doc usually has at least comment access for everyone at Axelerant. Google Docs is great excellent for sharing and collaboration but not suitable unsuitable for organizing information (which is where Confluence shines). This is why a common typical workflow is that documents begin in Google Docs and end up in Confluence. In fact, this This communication charter followed the same workflow.
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Synchronous communication
This communication style of communication is characterized by being able to converse with immediate responses. Because of this nature, the choice of tools doesn’t matter as much, and we will describe our practices irrespective of the tool you use (Zoom, telephone, Google Meet, etc.)
Watch the mute button. No one likes reminding you that you “are on mute,” and you wouldn’t like repeating everything you said. We know stuff happens, but do try to keep this in mind. The flipside flip side is also true. Keep yourself on mute when you have to begin a side - conversation or just a lot of background noise.
To improve remote conversations with better interpersonal connection and comprehension of body language, we encourage to keep the video mode is on except when there are bandwidth issues (let the person(s) on the other side know this) or a psychological safety concern (discuss the safety concern with your Coach). Regarding your background, the The latest version of Zoom allows you to easily blur itZoom version has blurring virtual backgrounds.
Hybrid communication
This falls somewhere between synchronous and asynchronous communication styles. These are the challenging areas of communication because it can be confusing based on how you are using use these tools at any given time.
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Jira is Axelerant’s issue tracker of choice. We expect frequent and regular updates on Jira on specific issues; hence, and hence it falls in the section of hybrid communication tools. Update issues frequently with the correct assignee, description, workflow state, and other relevant details (log your chargeable time). Making sure this information is complete and relevant appropriate is important essential from both a historical and real-time perspective.
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Slack is Axelerant’s primary communication platform. Almost all types of conversations are initiated on Slack , and most of them end there. Apart from conversationsdiscussions, Slack is also used for #announcements, updates, and other notifications, making it asynchronous in nature. Given the wide variety of uses and capabilities, it is not surprising that Slack is easily misused or not optimally used.
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Since Slack is our primary tool for communication, it makes sense to document guidelines for that at the top - level of the document rather than four levels down. Besides the following, more Slack guidelines.
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Even though we could use Slack for real-time conversations, always begin your messages as if you were writing a letter (or an email). This means that you You should not send “Hi” to begin start a conversation and then wait for a reply. Write down the entire message and give all the necessary context.
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At Axelerant, we value openness as one of our core values and strive to begin open in many aspects of our work. For this reason, most of our channels are open available to join for anyone in Axelerant (public). As such, we recommend sharing in open channels rather than private channels or direct messages. For example, all of our policy discussions are openavailable, and channels begin with the word “disc-.” Use private channels for sensitive discussions only, not something that could be useful to the rest of the team. We should use direct messages only for discussion dialogue that is strictly 1-on-1. Project communication is not a 1-on-1 discussion, even if there is only one other person on the project.
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Let’s get this out of the way, as this is not very importantunimportant. Every message you send might potentially notify someone. However, we see notifications as the responsibility of the receiver. This means we choose over-communication even though it might mean there could be a lot of notifications. Slack provides various tools to manage notifications, and we expect everyone to set them based on their preferences.
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Please send your message on the channel which is most relevant to it. Sometimes, there might be two or more channels that could be relevant, in which case you can cross-post. Many channels are intended for a specific use - case, and you should strive to use the channel for its intended purpose. For example, we have an #internal-support channel for seeking support (which you should whenever you’re stuck). We also have various “guild” channels for discussions and sharing links related to a specific topic. Our project channels generally begin with the word “eng-” indicating that only project-specific discussion happens in the channel (apart from any notifications). There are many other miscellaneous channels such as #humour, #cool-stuff, #happy-hours, etc., and you are encouraged to find those.
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Especially in channels, reply to a message by threading into it rather than in the channel. This makes it easy to find all relevant past conversations for a particular topic and makes it feasible to have parallel conversations in a channel without cluttering it. You may or may not choose to thread in direct messages as there is little chance of parallel conversations there (although it is certainly possible)similar discussions.
Use CATTE
(courtesy: Alice Ko - source)
It’s handy to remember a catchy acronym to communicate better using asynchronous modes of communication but especially hybrid. The acronym is CATTE, and this is from an Alice Ko from a podcast linked above.
C - Context: Did you give the context?
A - Answer: Did you answer the question?
T - Timeline: Did you give the request a timeline or a turnaround time for the request?
T - Transparent: Were you transparent?
E - Emoji: Did you add an emoji for emotion? (See Poe’s law on why this is important)
Channel Map
Use this to quickly determine which form of communication you might want to use depending on the context.
Channel | Primary Use | Norm |
|---|---|---|
Slack (all channels) | Day-to-day communication | Response within working hours in 1-2 business days. |
For non-urgent requests (such as non-urgent support from the people-ops team) | Response within the SLA of the requestee. | |
Phone | For emergencies | |
SMS | For emergencies, if not reachable by phone | Respond ASAP. |
Project channels on Slack | Day-to-day project-related communication | Project channels typically begin with the prefix |
Guild Channels on Slack | Conversations related to a specific topic | Guild channels typically begin with the prefix |
Service Area Channels on Slack | Announcements, async meetings, and service area updates | Avoid using these channels for conversations and prefer guilds. They typically begin with the prefix |
Other channels on Slack | Conversations not related to any topic but following a context | Find a relevant channel such as #internal-support, #humour# humor, and #cool-stuff to post your thoughts. If you can’t find anything relevant, post in #general. See #we-have-a-channel-for-that for a list. |
Jira | Project or initiative conversation | Use a relevant issue within your projects' projects’ Jira to update meeting decisions, discussions from calls, and Slack conversations. |
Confluence | Documentation, project notes | Use a relevant Confluence space to document meeting notes, conversations, project documentation, etc. Use Axelerant Handbook for organizational documentation. |
Zoom | Audio/Video calls | Use this to quickly resolve conversations when text conversation isn’t enough (or when Slack is down, ; see next section on Emergency Chat). |
Emergency Chat
Slack is down
Use the "Slack “Slack Down!" ” group chat on Zoom.
In the Zoom desktop app, go to the Contacts tab
Click
+Click "Join “Join a Channel"Channel”
Search "Slack “Slack down!"”
Click "Join"“Join”
Once the service is restored, go back to Slack.
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Navigate to the appropriate Slack channel or direct message.
Use
/callto trigger a call.You may need to give permissions permission if it's it’s the first time you are using use Slack calls.
Once service is restored, go back to Zoom.
Slack and Zoom are down
Reach out via Google Chat/Email. Once service is restored, go back to Slack and Zoom.
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