Communication

Each project will have its own development channel in Slack. For example, JSoft would have a #jsoft-dev channel that should be used for technical questions and discussions. The client will not have access to this channel.

The team lead should be responsible for handling most questions. When appropriate, the team lead can huddle with the project manager or designer in order to answer the team’s questions. Once the team lead fully understands what (and why) something needs to be done, they should report back to the team. Ideally this communication pipeline will allow the team to depend on the lead as the source of truth for any of their questions.

Because we often work on deadlines, the responsiveness of the team lead is extremely important. Because this team member is rarely pushing code, they should be able to answer questions about the project in a timely manner. Questions should not go unanswered for more than 2 hours. If it is taking longer for the lead to get a clear answer to a question, the lead should keep the team informed on the status.

Transparency is one of our company values and is super important when it comes to communication. It’s better to bring issues out into the open and discuss them than to let them fester and possibly boil over. All developers should feel empowered to ask questions and the team lead should be open to answer any questions, including those regarding the reasoning behind tools and processes.