Last year during one of the retrospectives, we’ve realised as a team that we have different expectations towards the preferred ways of communication. Some people enjoyed async Slack messages, because it gives you opportunity to answer when your flow window is done. Others preffered huddle instead, because it allowed to clarify things in 2 minutes, instead of exchanging messages for 20.

In the end, we’ve established that we will do two things:

• Write in Slack profile description, what are the preffared ways of communicating with us;
• Look into others descriptions before reaching out to them and use a way of communication they preffered;

As a result, quality of communication in the team - and maybe even outside of it - should increase.

Extending this idea

After couples of weeks, I’ve discovered that we were not the only ones having this idea. Even entire website exists - it’s called https://managerreadme.com/. In short, it’s a place to write such .README, get tips on doing that, see how others did it and share it.

It’s very simple concept, but you will quickly discover that writing it requires you to do a self discovery exercise. Do you know immediately, what are your personal quirks? Most people need a minute or two to figure this out.

I’ve found excellend resources on how to write this document:

• FRR - The Indispensable Document for the Modern Manager
• Lara Hogan - Management Philosophy
• PlanetScale - Management
• Alan Johnson - 11 Principles of Engineering Management

What’s next

The .README is a living document. It’s never fully finished. I’ve just written my version 1.0, but I plan to send it to my collegues, teammates and reports and apply feedback. I’m excited on where this exercise will lead me.

Try it yourself.