Communication Tools

Chat Communication

Slack

Slack is our primary tool for both internal and external chat communication.

Channels Structure

Internal Channels

Chapter-based private channels regroup all teammates interested in each stack e.g. android-chapter, ios-chapter, product-chapter and web-chapter. Tech news, cool articles or technical questions are welcome in these channels.

Project Channels

Each project has three primary channels to which only the team members involved in the project are invited along with the external stakeholders (the Client):

• A private channel to discuss all project matters between internal team members and the external project stakeholders. The majority of all communications must happen here for transparency purposes. This channel is named <project-name>-squad.
• A private channel to discuss project matters between internal team members only. This channel is named <project-name>-internal.

• A public channel to receive all third party and monitoring tools notifications, such as CI, GitHub, Shortcut, LinearB, etc.
  Notifications are purposely separated from the other chat channels to (1) avoid interrupting conversations and (2) allow having different settings of email and app notifications.
  This channel is named <project-name>-activity.

  When working on a project comprising multiple developers, prefer to subscribe to the repository notifications in this channel. Below is an example of the Slack command for a repository hosted on GitHub:

  /github subscribe #{owner_name}/#{repo_name}
  

  Here is an example:

  /github subscribe nimblehq/cx-web
  

Additionally, when a project involves the development of applications on more than one platform (Android, iOS, and Web) and the squad for each platform has two developers or more, a private sub-channel for each platform must be created. This allows developers on each platform to discuss technical project matters more often without interrupting the communication in the other project channels like internal or squad.

The channel for each platform must only include the Team Leads and Developers for each platform alongside the Engineering Lead(s) for the project so that the latter can support the squad they oversee.

These channels are named after the platform name, for example: <project-name>-dev-android, <project-name>-dev-ios, <project-name>-dev-web.

Channel Access Request

Many of our Slack channels are private, so a request must be sent in the channel #access-requests with the channel details.

For all public channels, the built-in channel browser can be used to view the complete list of channels.

Asynchronous Communication

When using Slack for asynchronous communication, there are some basic rules to keep the exchange efficient and respectful of everyone’s time.

• Do not tag people if their immediate attention is not required.
• Favor long-form messages with a clear context and a detailed thought or question (several short messages, even in a thread, will be more disrupting and difficult to follow).
• Clearly state that an immediate response is not required.
• Explicitly mention a date by which you need to get a response.

Keybase

Keybase is our secondary tool for both internal and external chat communication.

As all communication is securely encrypted on Keybase, we primarily use it to send credentials such as username/passwords, API keys/secrets to our team members but also to external stakeholders.

Line

Line is our tertiary tool exclusively used for internal and out-of-office chat communication.

Video Calls

Google Meet is our primary tool for both internal and external video-based communication.

While Slack offers video calls, the team predominantly uses Google Meet for all internal meetings:

• Sprint planning sessions.
• Chapter retrospectives.
• One-on-one feedback sessions.
• All-hands sessions.
• Direct calls between teammates.

When it comes to video calls with external parties, Google Meet is also always used when Nimble is the host. The main use cases are job interviews and client meetings.

However, the team often uses other tools such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams when the external party is the host for the calls. Therefore, our teammates must ensure to have these tools set up.

Email

Every teammate has a company email @nimblehq.co on Google Workspace. To maintain consistency between all email signatures, and to ensure that they all look good, we have designed an email signature template. Follow these steps to set up a signature:

• Generate the signature at https://nimble-email-signature.herokuapp.com/
• Select all (CMD+A) and copy it (CMD+C)
• Open the Gmail web client.

• Open the settings (⚙️ icon in the top right corner)

  

• In the General tab, scroll down to the Signature section

• Paste (CMD+V) the signature in the textarea