[nlnn]

Any tips on making sure that Slack isn't the place for important decisions?

We're facing this problem at the moment, with Slack being heavily used for almost everything.

Main difficulty is changing culture around its use - there are plenty alternatives that we push people towards, but they tend to get ignored in favour of Slack since asking is easier there.

[bluehatbrit]

I think it really depends on your team and your position within the team. For me it was just a case of pointing out that people feel under pressure to respond and it's making it harder to focus. It was a genuine problem within the team that lots of people were feeling so it wasn't really news to anyone. Then it was just a case of being the one to start noticing topics that are larger and pushing them out of slack. "This feels like it might need some team wide input, Phil, can you do a summary in an email and send it around?" or something along those lines.

I suppose it's important to say don't be militant about it and allow discussions to happen a bit to really see if they're shallow or deep topics. Shallow topics are fine for slack because you probably only need a couple people's input. Deep topics where you specifically want the whole team are the ones you want to pull into something slower moving.

Trying to change habbit is tricky so it's a case of slow errosion of the old habbit with the new one. Eventually the team started to make those kind of calls themselves, and newer team members picked it up quickly as well.

[pseudalopex]

Limit message retention.