Slack Me If You Can! Using Enterprise Social Networking Tools in Virtual Agile Teams

Abstract

Virtual teams rely on enterprise social networking tools such as Slack to collaborate efficiently. While such tools contribute to making the communication more synchronous and support distributed agile development, there are several challenges such as how to interact with each other and how to balance the communication with other types of communication mechanisms such as meetings, e-mail, and phone. In this paper, we describe and discuss how a distributed global project used Slack. Some of the challenges we identified were related to language problems, using too much direct messaging when communicating, and unbalanced activity (33% of the users accounted for 86% of the messages). The positive aspects of using the tool were increased transparency, team awareness, and informal communication. Further, Slack facilitates problem-focused communication which is essential for agile teams. Our study stresses the importance of reflecting on how virtual teams use communication tools, and we suggest that teams decide on guidelines on how to use the tools to improve their coordination.