Team operations

As a totally distributed team, it is important to have team practices that give one another insight into what we’re working on, identify opportunities to collaborate, and un-block one another. This chapter describes some of the practices that we adopt towards these goals.

• Scope and responsibilities
  • Define systems and processes for coordination
• Coordination strategy and goals
  • Our goals
  • Have a single source of truth
  • If it’s not written it doesn’t exist
  • Broadcast updates in multiple places
  • Update early and often
  • Distributed-first operations
• Making decisions at 2i2c
  • Principles of decision making
    • Leave a paper trail
    • Provide context, a plan, and a rationale
    • Designate a decider
    • Timebox the discussion
    • Consult the right people
    • Iterate on the core ideas.
    • Make it safe to try.
    • Make it safe to fail.
    • Bias towards action.
    • Trust one another.
  • Learn about consent-based decision making
• Team Practices
  • Giving and receiving Effective Feedback
    • Quick overview
      • What is Feedback
      • Why is it important
      • What isn’t considered feedback
      • Who benefits from feedback
      • When to give and receive feedback
      • Caveats to feedback (the fantasies)
      • When should you use this document
    • How to give feedback
    • How to receive feedback
    • Saying “No” to receiving feedback
      • Deferring feedback with “Not now”
    • Asking for feedback
    • Feedback in asynchronous teams
    • Opportunities to give/solicit feedback
    • Examples of “Good” vs “Bad” feedback
      • Example 1
      • Example 2
      • Example 3
      • Example 4
    • Common feedback mechanisms
      • Continue vs Consider
      • Impact Feedback
      • Radical Candor
      • REAP Model
      • RISE Model
    • Follow-up thoughts/article
    • Resources
• Getting started and onboarding
  • Get an onboarding champion
  • Get access to the right accounts
  • Our documentation structure
  • How our team compass is organized
  • Where to learn about our workflow
• Where to look for information
  • Documentation
  • Google Drive
  • Public GitHub Issues
  • Private GitHub Issues
• Meeting guidelines and policy
  • Guidelines
  • Roles
    • Meeting Facilitator
    • Meeting Recorder
  • Types of meetings
    • Asynchronous team syncs
    • Team retrospectives
    • Professional development
    • All-hands
• Communication channels
  • Communication guidelines
  • GitHub Issues and Projects
  • Slack
    • Public channels
    • Private channels
    • Conversations that should not be in Slack
  • Zoom
  • Personal e-mail
  • Shared e-mail via Google groups
• About the team compass
  • Why have a Team Compass?
  • Update the team compass
  • What is a Source of Truth