You can’t solve the endless chat room churn problem by adding a layer of communication stack churn on top of it.

This is why it’s critically important to have a leader on the team to guide by example and set expectations for the team. Someone who can interrupt endless chat debates and steer people back to the ticket queue or planning tools. Someone who isn’t afraid to shut down endless debate about past decisions that were already made. Someone who won’t hesitate to recognize when conversations are becoming a distraction and force them into a call/meeting.

And perhaps most importantly, someone who can maintain an updated and accessible plan of record so that people don’t try to rely on chat as the source of truth. The plan of record can be as simple as a shared word doc or as complex as any tool you can think of, but the only thing that really matters is that someone keeps it updated.

The temptation is to use the most complex plan of record tool you can find because it may look “better” but it’s usually the simpler tools that are more likely to get used.

These are people problems and you have to invest in taking the lead yourself or training someone to do it. I’ve been down the road of endlessly changing tools in the hopes that a new tool will solve our problems, but the churn and inevitable loss with each tool transition only makes it worse.

In my team: most Individuals keep notifications off except for @ messages and DMs : in both Slack and MS Teams. And everyone uses DM & @ carefully.

DND status is also used when needed.

Emails are for detailed and non-urgent info.