Communication

Poor communication is a common cause of blockers within a team or organization. Poor communication leads to misalignment of goals, which can delay deployments and projects. When team members aren't on the same page, information gets lost, assumptions are made incorrectly, and work often needs to be redone or revised.

Communication tools serve two general purposes: decision-making and social interaction. Having a standard set of communication tools and protocols can help your team communicate efficiently and effectively. These ever-evolving tools each have strengths and excel when used correctly.

The following table lists communication tools and methods that we use at HashiCorp, and when we use them.

Tool	When to use it
Video chat (Zoom, Slack huddles, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams)	For real-time, high bandwidth discussions. Use for cultivating a discussion rather than transactional asks.
Instant messenger (Slack, Teams)	For real-time, asynchronous discussions. Useful for when team members are online and to have a quick discussion that does not require depth.
Documentation repository (Confluence, Google Docs)	For documenting decisions as the source of truth.
Ticketing (Jira, Asana)	For project management after making plans.

HashiCorp resources:

Standard communication tools

Next steps

In this section of how to Create high-performing teams, you learned about tools to increase team communication. Creating high performing teams is part of the Define and automate processes pillar.