But even that highlighted some differences in how we use the tools, and it gave us the opportunity to clarify some assumptions, which was very interesting. For example, Chad, our illustrator, there [inaudible – 05:02] status updates, and other people pay close attention to it and really watch it every day. This kind of thing is good to know, because if you want to share something important in Chad, you have to mark it specifically in an update, and I did, or use another tool to be more attentive. One of the hypotheses we encountered was from [inaudible – 05:24], who assumed that when she made Slack`s status available to a person, she thought they were online and available to answer questions. But it turns out that most of the people on the team don`t hold their Slack status exactly. For example, I am one of those people. I just opened it all day in my browser, but I turned off all notifications. So it`s open, but when I`m working on something else, I don`t know. Clarifying this assumption prevents her from being frustrated in the future if she doesn`t get an immediate response from people, because she knows she can`t expect them to be online. We can avoid some of the fundamental misunderstandings by establishing a team agreement: a fundamental set of expectations for cooperation.

A team agreement describes the type of information we share, how we communicate with each other, and how we know what we`re doing with each other. DOCUMENT THINGS YOU DISAGREE ON AND DISAGREE ABOUT. When you`re done, talk about each team holding note – which is important in all three areas….