Umano provides insights into your team's online communication flow, using behavioural patterns observed via group communication channels such as Slack, Bitbucket, Confluence and JIRA.
Understanding the flow of information is a primary signal of the cultural health of a team. Observing the way a team communicates online is particularly relevant for teams working remotely or that are distributed.
The communication flow insights provided by Umano include:
Umano's models use Slack, Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket to obtain information on communications.
Communication Balance
What is it
Communication balance measures the extent to which team members contribute to a team's online flow of information.
Why it matters
Encourage diversity of perspective and opinion, and address the dominance of individual team contributor(s) that may prevent quieter team contributor(s).
What ‘good’ looks like
Teams rating between 45% -80% typically have more mature online communication practices. We rarely see teams rating between 80-100%, at least not sustained when they do.
How Umano measures this
Umano determines the balance of a project's communications by looking at:
Messages sent in communication tools such as Slack
Comments in project management tools like Confluence and JIRA as well as Source code management tools like Bitbucket
A perfect score (100) is achieved when all team members contribute equally to team communications on a given interval (e.g. 25%, 25%, 25%, 25% for a team of 4).
A team receives a score of 0 where team communications are dominated by a single team member on a given interval (e.g. 100%, 0%, 0%, 0% for a team of 4)
Practices that influence this measure
Message count
team members who haven’t interacted in the tools during the iteration period
percentage difference between the dominant speaker and other team members
communication pattern of each of the other team members.
What’s included?
Each model looks and specific activities within the tools. Below a list of activities that contribute to Balance of Communication and activities that do not have an impact on this metric.
Included | Not included |
|---|---|
All messages in selected public channels in Slack and Mattermost Comments on Jira tickets, Confluence pages and Bitbucket PR's | Direct messages or private channels Creating or editing Jira descriptions, custom fields, labels etc. Creating or editing Confluence pages Creating or editing Bitbucket PR descriptions Any communication from people outside of the linked team members. |
Tips for achieving balanced communication
Follow up in writing after a face-to-face conversation. It will not only help to document decisions but it will help with tasks ownership too.
Ask quieter team members for their input with specific questions rather than a generic "@here" or "to all".
Supporting Resources
Google Psychological safety
Cultural Health/ Information flow
Responsiveness
What is it
Responsiveness measures the time taken for a team member to respond to a request of another team member or of the whole project team.
Why it matters
Members of a responsive team are able to remove blockers and progress with their work quicker than less responsive teams.
What ‘good’ looks like
Mature teams will determine their own guardrail for acceptable levels of timelines when getting responding to requests for information. Setting these expectations is especially helpful for teams working remotely or in a distributed manner across different timezones.
How Umano measures this
Umano determines the speed of a project's communications by looking at:
The time between questions and answers sent in communication tools such as Slack
The time between questions and answers sent in project management tools like Confluence and Jira
What’s included?
Included | Not included |
|---|---|
All messages in public channels in Slack that have a question mark '?' and mention a team member '@name', Comments on Jira tickets, Confluence pages and Bitbucket PR's | Direct messages or private channels Creating or editing Jira descriptions, custom fields, labels etc. Creating or editing Confluence pages Creating or editing Bitbucket PR descriptions Any communication from people outside of the linked team members. |
Practices that influence this
the percentage of requests that are tagged
the percentage of requests answered from previous sprints
the percentage of unanswered requests at the end of the sprint
Tips for quicker responses
Include a check in your daily stand up if anyone is waiting on a response from one of the team members. Especially if there is a lower score (for the previous day)
With the wide range of tools most teams use, it is not strange that notifications can get lost. Keep a personal record for pending questions.
Set clear expectations on what’s an acceptable time to respond to request for help from one of your peers, especially if your team is working across multiple time zones
Supporting Resources
Communication flow and responsiveness
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