The two values that I seriously care about in communication and collaboration are transparency and promptness. It is tough to be transparent and prompt and there are many both psychological and social reasons why we sometimes do not want to be so. However, we, as a lab, should try out best to be transparent and prompt in all aspects of our research.
Slack is the primary way for us to communicate remotely. Just to make our communication more instant, context-aware, and interactive. This may chance but I have not found any better solution.
I would recommend the following (and keep recommending you)
- Install Slack Desktop application instead of using it as a web-browser application.
- Leave it on all the time when you use computers.
- Turn off all the notifiactions.
- Use the channel more than direct message (unless there needs to be a reason why it needs 1:1 conversation)
Note that slack is not good for archival. All the messages are going to go away at some point. If you would like to archive the conversation use something else (Email).
Zoom is the conference call software we are going to use if we were to do a conference call. Install the software and be faimilar with it. It has many convinence functions (sharing screen, whiteboard, recording, etc.)
We are going to use Google Drive for ANY kinds of documents that we share. (mostly Google Docs) Sorry I don't do Microsoft Words anymore and sending emails. Each project has one Google Drive Folder. Each one of you will have one stand-up report document.
Every project that involves programming, I cannot imagine any project that has no programming involved by the way, will be hosted in GitHub public repository. I strongly strongly recommend not to use github commandline. Use Github Desktop application. We are interactive system builders, if you are the one who is proud of yourself using command line app while there is UI version of it, maybe you are doing a wrong research. https://desktop.github.com/
We are going to use Github Issues for keeping track of any bugs/enhacmenet that we want to make in a programming project. Read this article to master the Github Issues function https://guides.github.com/features/issues/ Make sure to create an issue each time you identify a problem or new task that needs to be done. Assign issues to yourself when you start them. You can create issues without assigning them to yourself, but once something is assigned to you, other will avoid doing it, so it's your responsibility!
On the other hand, please always assign the task to yourself to avoid conflicting / overlapping with other's work. That can cost the team important time and effort! This should be done whether or not you plan on solving the issue immediately. This is an important best practice for tracking progress, identifying who has experience with what code, and so on. Plus, it's industry standard required practice.
Read the following article for GitHubt usage. https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/
We are going to use "centralized workflow" in using Github. Read this to learn more about it : https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows#gitflow-workflow
Email is used when
- When you would like to involve someone outside the lab in a conversation.
- When you would like to send a file that needs to be archived.
- When you would like to foward someone else' email to one of us.
Everyone in the lab should create a professional web presence. (the worst possible case, LinkedIn but yes, it is the worst) - the lab that I used to be part of required everyone to create a personal website and I thought it was really good idea for students to create a website. (not the one for personal use but for the professional use) Cuz Websites can have something that your resume cannot (multimedia, images, other relevant links) - Please consider making one - it can be simple.
This is the lab where I got phd from : https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~wlasecki/croma.html use this as an example of what you can make and how simple it can be at your level. but one important thing is that you can see that almost everyone has their own web site.
If you are a phd student and does not have a website, that's a big problem. (Once you have websites and then I can start to link those from mine --> which gives you extra visibility --> extra opportunities)