For a few of the organizations I worked for, we used a program called Slack, which is a instant messaging platform that many companies have been using to communicate with different members and teams within the company. It is similar to the platform Discord which is another instant messaging platform. The platform allows you form different "channels" or group chats with different members of your organization. You can also send files, images, recordings, etc. within these chats. Personally, I have found the platform to be very streamline since members can easily just message people or groups directly. I believe the program allows for easier and arguably faster communication between members in a team, as well as better organization of these communication lines so people can easily search for previous discussion or documentation related to the project.
I was curious to hear what your opinions were on the platform? Do you feel like that it allows for better organization and/or easier communication as opposed to simply emailing individuals? Are there problems that can arise from using platforms such as these in project management? What other benefits do you think chat platforms like this can bring to project teams within companies and organizations? What improvements or additions could be implemented into these programs to make project management more streamline across an organization?
I am glad you brought this up. For those who have used Discord before, Slack is extremely intuitive and almost identical in function to Discord. As much as I like Discord, I am glad companies don't use it for communication because it is nice to have a separation between your personal and social communication hub and your professional communication hub. It helps avoid any kind of embarrassing crossover that may accidently occur if you used Discord for both work and recreation. I know a lot of the school clubs at NJIT use Discord, which is convenient but also has the benefit of indirectly training students to use Slack professionally as well by familiarizing them with such a software.
As mentioned by the other reply Discord is a great tool but it does blur the line between work and home where I hang out with my friends a lot on discord so using that for work kind of takes a bit away from my experience. What I mean by this is if I am doing something for work or school I usually have discord muted so I dont constantly hear the notification sound from the servers I am a part of whereas if I am also expecting work messages then I need to keep it on. It also just adds clutter since I need to keep straight work and personal on one App. This is why I personally like group me for projects and I usually always recommend that projects I am a part of in school use it. It is better than just having a groupchat because it doesn't matter if people have IOS or Android unlike normal groupchats where it is difficult to mix IOS and Android.
I agree with both of you that Slack is a useful communication app and the having experience with Discord helps make using it more intuitive. I've recently discovered an app that I use for my personal use and its called Notion. On Notion, I track my assignments and job applications, their status, other reminders, course information, and so on. I think for the most part, Notion is also used more professionally. It's essentially a workspace that, like Slack and Discord, can have subspaces for specifics. You can link/embed urls, meeting notes, pdfs, update statuses, and more (practically any file). Its layout is similar to that of a website and is also highly customizable. I will point out though that it is not really a communication app, more so an app/hub to keep the data/documents/timelines organized. Team members can leave comments and have a "mini-chat" but I think this app would be best used alongside another communications app like Slack or MS Teams.
I have used slack on multiple occasions for different organizations. I do agree that its similarity to Discord and other IM apps allows for swift communication between group members. Info can be disseminated quickly to different teams or the whole project. The channel-centered hierarchy is easy to jump into, even if you are late to the project. Personally, I dislike having to add another app to my computer/phone, but another messaging service I like to use is Microsoft Teams. This is a little more for industry applications; once you have a company account, you have immediate access to all contacts within the company directory. I find it is more intuitive for people working from home or on solo projects. One to one communication is much more intuitive in Teams, and I prefer it over Slack/Discord/GroupMe/Etc. However, any communication platform is better than email.
In my experience applying strengths of a few apps can ultimately be better than restricting to one. My history with Slack is okay at best, I felt that if numerous projects were running, and each project had its own department group within, then it becomes subfolders to subfolders which isn't intuitive to me. My current role utilizes Team, and IFS. Though Teams is self explanatory, direct communication is the strong suit as stated by @hmara. Group assessments are more into team's capability of accessing excel, PowerPoint, etc... In the other way, IFS is less of a PM tool and more of an organizational tool for documents. For example, each 'part' has its own number and using IFS you can filter for every file associated for that part, and filter further to discussions in the kickoff stage, the planning stage, etc... IFS is notable because it eliminates the subfolder to subfolder rabbit-hole, and instead just implements search and filter systems. Therefore a good balance between apps that can handle communication and apps that handle files are what I see important to PMs
