Response Times and Communication Expectations¶
As an asynchronous organization, it is very important to know the valid timeframes for responding to messages and the communication expectations that everyone in the organization shares.
Response Times¶
- I will respond any client email addressed to me or any client ping in any platform within 24 hours (excluding weekend
days), or ensure that someone else on my cell does.
- I will CC or forward to help@opencraft.com all client emails and replies, so that others can take over the thread with that client if needed, or refer to it for context.
- If I can't answer immediately, I will at least send a quick reply to let them know we're working on a response, and when they should expect it.
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I will reply to pings/emails from other OpenCraft team members within 24 hours (again excluding weekend days and scheduled time off).
- But this should be a "worst case" scenario - completing the work on time is still the primary goal, so when someone is blocked and pings me for help, I will try to do as much as I can to unblock them quickly, rather than starting a 24h ping-pong cycle that takes up all the time in the sprint without accomplishing any work.
- If a ping has no corresponding ticket, or the ticket is not scheduled for the current sprint, I will respond to the ping with an estimate for when they can expect a full response.
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I will read and respond to forum threads:
- Direct ping from another team member: within 24h, excluding week-ends & time off;
- On the announcements forum1: within 24h, excluding week-ends & time off;
- On the rest of the forums, within 2 weeks, except for the off topic forum1, which doesn't need to be read or replied to at all.
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I will respond to pings from not client Open edX community member when I think convenient:
- Giving an answer is good educational and professional, but there isn't an special response time.
Communication Expectations¶
- I will be professional and polite when communicating with clients.
- I will prefer asynchronous over synchronous processes (keep meetings to a minimum). A chat
conversation is a form of a meeting.
- Generally, discussions should happen first asynchronously on the JIRA tickets; if there is really something that can't be efficiently sorted out asynchronously, have a chat or schedule a meeting. JIRA might have long response cycles (around 1 day turnaround). If this time isn't enough to unblock someone and finish their sprint commitments, use Mattermost, even though it's more disruptive to people's workflow.
- If you do have a synchronous conversation with someone about a particular task, post a summary of the result/decision from that conversation on the JIRA ticket for easier future reference.
- When scheduling meetings, give them a precise agenda. For people using Calendly, like Braden and Xavier, book meetings there, as it allows us to avoid the scheduling overhead.
- Try, as much as possible, to use a similar approach with clients - don't let them invade your days with meetings. Calendly is good for this too, as it allows to define time slots where you'll have the meetings, to minimize the disruption they cause to your day and productivity. If you want a calendly account, let Xavier know and he will set you up with the OpenCraft account.
- I will post on public channels on Mattermost rather than private 1-to-1 channels whenever possible, even if the message is just for one person. This allows us to know what others are working on, and helps to replace the overheard discussions in physical offices - it can also be an occasion for someone else with knowledge about your issue to get the context, and to intervene if it is useful to the conversation.
- I will make sure I communicate with my reviewer(s) on tasks about availability and timezone overlap if I didn't have knowledge about it before. I will use the contact sheet1 where necessary.