Ask Me Anything (AMA): Async Collaboration (ft. Confluence Group Product Manager, Jason Phan)
Ask Confluence Group Product Manager, Jason Phan, questions on async collaboration tools and practices between now and Tuesday, 12 October EST.
Asynchronous collaboration relies on digital tools to keep everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction, which can include real-time work in the tool at the same time. This enables collaboration between people in different places without needing to hold a meeting to accomplish the same tasks.
At Atlassian, we use Confluence to collaborate with teammates from all over the world. It helps us stay aligned on moving pieces, allows us to plan and provide feedback without having to set up a meeting for every note, and enables documentation to serve as a single source of truth on work even after teammates move on to other projects (or even other companies). In fact, for some, it's the default way of working where meetings are only used for collaboration when an in-the-moment discussion is necessary.
On 12 October EST, ask subject matter expert, Jason Phan, any questions you have on the practice. He has the research, product understanding, and lived experience to help many improve their team's async collaboration. Or even if you don't have a question of your own, come back before 12 October EST to upvote the questions you want to see answered or answer some of the questions yourself!
*As a bonus, listen to the "Work Check" podcast episode that features this practice to learn more about the history of async collaboration, its pros and cons, and a healthy debate on what should be the default way to collaborate.
12 answers
@Kishan Sharma - Great question! The practice of using a decision making framework was something I had picked up at my time at LinkedIn, but it's something I've grown to really appreciate while at Atlassian given that I truly believe that a tool like Confluence really helps in documenting and sharing decisions -- especially in an async world.
Let's first start with decision making frameworks. There are a couple out there, but the ones I've used a bit and would recommend are:
- DACIs (💡 there's an easy template you can spin up in Confluence that we use at Atlassian all the time)
- RAPID - What was commonly used at LinkedIn. First popularized by consultants at Bain
Where I feel that Confluence or other work management tools can really help with decision making, especially in an async world, is that you can easily spin one up, work through a decision, and then maintain it somewhere so that theoretically years down the road, anyone who wondered about why this decision was made can easily find the page and get context.
More specifically the steps we use at Atlassian are:
1. Spin up a DACI using our Confluence template
2. Tag those that are involved (using the acronym D-A-C-I) as well as a due date (this is important!)
3. Start collaborating! Usually the driver will put in background context, lay out the options, and outline the impact of each one (e.g., in terms of cost, upside, pros/cons)
4. The page will then either be circulated or folks who have been tagged will go through. Comments and questions will be asked and folks will respond in-line.
5. Ideally decisions can then be made and agreed upon asynchronously (this happens a lot with our team) -- or if needed, key folks will hop in a room and then discuss.
6. Once a decision has been made, the DACI will be marked as "completed" with a clear articulation of what was decided. From here, depending on the teams involved, the page will get filed away for perpetuity (e.g., a parent page that houses all decisions). I can't tell you how many times we've referred to past DACIs to understand what decision was made and why -- and this ability to maintain content in a structured and organized manner is why I believe Confluence is so essential to maintaining an organization's collective knowledge. Though I am biased 😀
Hope this helps!
Within the Confluence team, we talk a lot about the "Blank Page Problem" and how we want to help our users with this and get to creating the good stuff faster on Confluence. Templates are the great way to get those great ideas in your head and onto a page.
Here are the top templates that I use the most to help with async collab
1. DACIs - I cover this extensively with Kishan's question, and from my perspective it's a must-have for teams working asynchronously
2. Project Poster - As a Product Manager I find this template invaluable to help lay out the "what" and the "why" for a new project or product. The magic I've found also with a template like this is that as more teams across your organization use the same templates, it helps with organizational efficiency as everyone knows exactly where to look on a page for specific questions or clarification points. I've definitely seen this benefit with our teams at Atlassian
3. Career Development Plan - I use this a bit with my direct team when we do our monthly career growth check-ins. I'll typically have my team fill this in on their own time before we meet, and while our chats don't always adhere directly to this template, I find a lot of value as it provides a solid structure to ensure that we cover all of the right pieces
Hope this helps!
@Jenny Kim - This is a really important question, and I'll admit, not an easy one to address. At Atlassian, we've found with our customers that it's not only the tools themselves that are important, but it's also the practices that are critical to help drive change through first a team and then an organization. And the key to this is what we at Atlassian call "champions".
From what I've seen, this cultural change often starts first with someone in a team who is establishing these practices (the "champion") -- whether it's around more effective documentation or other async best practices. The goal here is that others in a team will have an "a-ha!" moment and realize that this different way of working is just much more effective. The reality is that this sometimes doesn't hit that critical mass and take off.
There are a two things that I've personally noticed which has helped drive this change -- though I will say that teams / cultures are different everywhere so YMMV:
1. Focus on driving outcomes from these best practices - In more cases than not, meeting notes, documentation, and other async best practices are themselves not the main task to be done. They're often a means to accomplish another, more important task like making a decision or getting alignment. I think this "a ha!" moment is made even more effective when your team can understand the benefit to these practices directly through the outcomes. If Suzie from Legal can see clearly that your page just saved her a meeting to discuss this topic with you, this will go a long way
2. Senior champions - This is not a requirement, but I have seen that these best practices can go a much longer way when there is buy-in from managers or other folks in leadership. If your executive team starts to use more Slack and less e-mail, the rest of the organization will take those cues and move accordingly. To the extent you can get senior champions, I have seen this go a long way in changing company cultures. Start with a team or department lead and go from there
Hope this helps!
Hi @Walter Buggenhout ! -
Yes, async collaboration is definitely a different way of working and requires both buy-in across an organization as well as ways to get everyone set up fast. I cover a bit of my thoughts around driving culture change in my response to @Jenny Kim 's question -- and I do believe that driving culture change is the single most impactful thing you can do to get more of these practices adopted (but it's not easy!).
I'll share a couple of other tips that I've found helpful when it comes to some of the points that you had mentioned:
1) Note taking is painful, but technology can help! - When it comes to capturing notes from a meeting, I think there are only 2 must-haves that need to be captured: (A) Decisions and (B) Action Items. These should be identified live in a meeting and attempted to be documented for future reference (and live in a Confluence page). For everything else, I've found especially that Zoom recordings are great to keep as part of your notes (I'm not as familiar with Teams). Zoom allows you to re-watch at a higher speed and it has a pretty good means to transcribe conversations into transcripts. This helps document key points without actually having to document them.
2) Templates - I've been a broken record on this (apologies), but templates can be very helpful to get people over the mental hurdle of creating content from a blank page. Particularly with things like meeting notes, a good template will make it easy to remember to jot down the important points.
Hope this helps!
Hi @Jimmy Seddon! -
Thanks for the question. I am a strong believer that async ways of working should be used by every team, and not just those that are not co-located or on similar time zones. Here are 2 reasons that come to mind:
1/ Go Meet-less - While meetings, whether in-person or remote, are necessary and valuable. I think many would agree that they are in too many meetings today (I know I am!). Part of the benefit of async working is to move work forward (make decisions, get aligned on the same topic, etc) without having to coordinate calendars and get into a real/virtual meeting room to hash things out.
2/ Organizational Knowledge sharing - This isn't a direct part of async working, but one of the beneficial byproducts that I have seen of async ways of working is that it encourages more documentation of all forms -- e.g., pages to capture notes, videos to illustrate demos, digital whiteboards to capture brainstorming, etc. Especially when Confluence is used to manage an organization's knowledge, these assets - if desired - can be easily saved and readily available for everyone in an organization to see. This helps to break down information silos and keeps everyone on the same page.
Hope this helps!
Hi @Jaime Uy ! -
First, I'd suggest starting with a template for roadmaps for your team to get started. A template like this is very helpful to provide structure for the creator to get started and make sure that they cover all of the right points. Hopefully this is a good first step to draft a strong roadmap.
Second, I would encourage earlier collaboration to get feedback sooner and allow teams to iterate. From what I've seen with some of our teams, earlier and frequent engagement across folks to collaborate on roadmaps helps to iron out wrinkles much earlier on.
Hope that helps!
Hi @Jenny Kim
My perspective is to lean heavily into async practices, and I covered with @Jimmy Seddon's questions why I think this way of working is great even for teams that are co-located.
I do want to clarify that async working does not mean that actual face-to-face meetings should be eliminated. Nothing is more important for a team to be healthy and high functioning than strong relationships, trust, and psychological safety amongst team members, and I don't believe this can be done without a good amount of live interaction and time. This is especially true for a new team that may not know one another. My perspective; however, with these async best practices is that they will reduce the number of unnecessary meetings and live interactions or ensure that when you do actually meet and interact, that time is spent in more important things (like getting to know one another or other active collaboration).
Answering your second question on which tools are good for everyone I think is fairly simple in theory (but not as simple to actually assess). From my perspective, it ultimately comes down to: "Do the personal/team/org benefits outweigh the 'overhead' of the tool?" No one loves writing Confluence pages, organizing Jira issues, etc, but everyone loves it when their work is made easy. If you don't feel that the benefits of your tool is clear and outweighs the work required to use and maintain it, then move on. And I will be the first to say that you should hold this bar for Atlassian's products as well. As a product manager, I view it as my job to ensure that our customers are constantly getting value from our products. If you aren't, please let us know and we'll work to make it better 🙏🏻
Hope that helps!
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