RFC--Day One Basecamp Experiment

The Problem

Currently our communication is fragmented across an array of tools. There's no real "right" place to talk about stuff so it gets scattered across many apps, most of them using email as their notification service, which most people do't check. As such most written conversations happen in Slack, which would be good except it's also disorganized by design.

Why we should do a Basecamp Experiment

Our communication tool stack currently looks like this:

1. Video Conferencing (Zoom/Tuple/etc...)
2. Slack
3. Github Projects
4. Google Docs
5. Github Issues (Async Communication)

Seems pretty standard, but I've studied many, many articles about the problems with [[Slack MOC#Articles|Group Chat (namely Slack)]] and Synchronous Communication in general. Most major all remote teams make use of what's called "Asynchronous Communication" which has a lot of power to make Remote work work a lot better for us in general and make us more effective than when we were in the office, maybe even more connected.

The problem with Zoom

Zoom has the same problems as all Synchronous Communication, but namely the fact that any information that's shared in them is locked to that meeting, meaning you have to be "In the room where it happened", this creates a (unintentional) power dynamic of those, "need to know" and those that don't. At best it makes people feel left out, at worst erodes trust. In a word, it's not transperent.

Not only that, because decisions aren't documented you're forced to repeat history, and make your same old mistakes, and second guess decisions that were counter-intuitive, yet right.

In a remote environment this information is even more locked by default because people don't cross pollinate information with Tribal Knowlege as much.

Yes, you could invite everyone all the time, but usually meetings aren't good with any more than 8 people anyway. And your day would be fragmented which is really bad for programmers.

We could record everything, but video isn't really "searchable" and takes forever to consume, wastes tons of hosting costs (assuming you want it to be private) and is basically impossible to skim.

We could always write meeting notes, which you should, if you have a meeting, but it's more work that people will most likely skip. It's also unnecessary if the communication happened in a written form anyway.

Overall Zoom, is good for Reclaming Conversation, but is disruptive, and anti-transparency.

2. The problem with Slack

Slack is our primary form of written communication but it's "Group Chat" model, is inherently disorganized. How so? Well think about it, Slack encourages people to only read the most new information. Is the newest information always the most important to see?

3. Why Basecamp

1. Basecamp is a good backbone of communication and Single Source of Truth that's approachable to technical and non-technical people alike.
2. Basecamp can combine many tools we're using
3. Basecamp's notifications make it more sticky than Github Projects
   • Nobody ever checks their notifications in Github and when they do it's days or weeks later
   • People's notifications in Github are stuffed full of spam from other 3rd part stuff
   • There's no Github desktop app
4. Slack's notifications are also bad, but for different reasons
5. This means we ONLY use Slack and Zoom for communication

Proposal

• Everyone uses Basecamp for it's project management, communication docs (google docs can be used, but they have to be listed in the files section)
• Experiment will last for 30 days
  • This seems like a long time, but we need to give people time to Give it 5 Minutes, it's different so people aren't going to like it at first
• If the experiment works, we keep on using it, if it fails, we export our data and back it up to other sources.

Objections I'm Guessing

1. "What we're working with works, why should we have to change?"
   1. Well I think it works to some degree, but I think we could be more effective. Hence the reason I think we should try this change, if we don't like it, we can go back!
2. "But I like Kanban boards!"
   1. Yes, lots of people do, but they have lots of problems, such as motiviation and not having a place for a visible project with high level goals. Basecamp solves this with it's it's nested nature.
   2. Also, you can emulate the "flow based" with todo groups
3. "Answering Paul's Argument against Basecamp"
   1. "We need fewer barriers for collaboration, not more"
      1. I agree, this is why for this experiment we would have EVERYONE stop using Slack, this way we don't have a problem with people being split between the apps and they can try Basecamp in a more realistic situation.