Here are some great reasons to stop using email for team communication and instead switch to Slack
- By default email messages are private – only available to the recipients. Slack messages are by default available to the whole team. Simply join the channel you’re interested in (or leave if not). How many times have you had to forward an email to someone who wasn’t on the original? or worse that other person never got to give their valuable contribution because they were never on the list?
- Build a knowledge base – with email when someone leaves your company their account is deactivated and along with it all their sent emails. Imagine how useful this info could be if preserved and made searchable! Key decisions, how-tos and historical context can be available throughout the project and made available to all especially new comers.
- Marketplace of apps – Slack has LOTS on fantastic integrations, like Git, Jenkins and JIRA which help to keep task communications flowing. Eg. see when a code review is required and openly discuss.
- Self service – No need to request mailing lists from your email admin for topics or projects, simply create a channel and invite the relevant team members. E.g. Just developers working on project X
- Multimedia – Call a video conference and screen share from within a shared channel without having to mess around with other conferencing apps. You can even give others control over your desktop (useful if it’s going to take too long to explain a technical task)
- Sync and Async – Conversations are much closer to real-time than email, but still have the option of being asynchronous if you don’t want to be distracted.
- Connection – Remote team mates feel more connected with Slack. You can see who’s online. You can see other work happening even if you’re not directly involved with the project or you can simply have a bit of banter with fellow employees easily without worrying about who should I CC in this email.
- Strangers are friends – Other companies can be given access to a specific Slack channel and feel part of the team.
- Don’t repeat yourself – No huge email chains with reply to all that require you to scroll through pages of crap to find the context on the conversation.
