Bol, the largest Dutch e-tailer comparable to Amazon, wanted to bring its IT and product teams closer together so they could work better and more integrated. They also saw opportunities for developers to work much more efficiently. To make that happen, the strategic decision was made to switch to Slack.
Previously, Bol’s development, IT, and product teams worked with general business tools that mainly operate independently of each other. Think of Microsoft Teams, Jira, Outlook, and Google Chat. While this provides a modern work experience, it is not very efficient and well integrated. It doesn’t encourage more collaboration. We spoke with Anthony Moendir of Bol, he is Principal Tech Leader and was closely involved in the implementation and rollout of Slack at Bol.
Several years ago Bol’s 800 developers and 500 product experts were growing more eager for a better work experience. 2.5 years ago, they eventually embraced Slack and made it the central collaboration tool for developers and product teams. After some preliminary cold feet about new tools, it was almost immediately widely adopted within the organization’s development teams.
Flow, feedback loops and cognitive load
If we zoom in a little deeper into the problem Bol wanted to solve, it involves three aspects that are very important to developers. However, this can certainly be extended to other teams within any other organization.
Flow; when you are in a flow you are highly productive
Software development is not the same as writing an e-mail or making a phone call. To write code, you must at least be aware of the structure of an application, the modules, and the libraries, as well as which functions are needed to develop a particular feature or to solve a bug. In addition, you should also know what impact certain features have on the application. That’s about the minimum knowledge you need before you can even write a letter of code. As a developer, you really have to dig in before you can start. Once you start developing, it can all go pretty fast, especially if you get into a flow.
What doesn’t help is if you have all sorts of separate tools to switch between to do your job. Colleagues and applications disturb you and take you out of your flow. That’s why developers often want to be left alone as much as possible. It’s not always so much a character trait as people still sometimes think. Keeping developers in their flow is valuable and can be achieved using fewer tools and integrating more.
Feedback loops; feedback or peer reviews
Sometimes, a developer gets stuck, something doesn’t work as expected, or he or she has doubts about the written code. This may be about the quality of the code, it may be too complex, or there may be doubts about whether the problem has really been solved. For example, has every scenario been taken into account?
In such cases, getting feedback from a colleague, a so-called peer review, is very helpful. Many modern development tools allow you to request such a peer review; however, you need to streamline it.
Cognitive load
The more applications your employees have to use to do their jobs, the heavier the cognitive load is. Most applications today come with notifications, alerts and reports. These need to be managed, and shutting yourself off for these interruptions is often difficult. So, if you can integrate applications, the cognitive load goes down.
Slack as a central application for development, IT and product teams
At Bol, they made Slack the central application for all development, IT and product teams. Google Chat has been phased out, and within the IT teams, except for some communication with the business, almost no Outlook and Teams are used anymore. Everything is integrated into Slack. That has more or less become the digital headquarters.
It doesn’t mean that developers now write their code in Slack, but it does mean that all the information comes together in Slack. For example, Bol has realized integrations between Slack and various applications of interest to developers. Think Jira, GitLab and Confluence. In total, Bol has linked 72 applications to Slack.
The developers and product experts at Bol are divided into smaller teams, each with its own responsibilities. Each team, in turn, has its own Slack channels through which it manages its projects.
When tickets are created in Jira, they usually arrive automatically in the right channel. Depending on the priority, they can be scaled up quickly, whether a ticket gets its own channel and people are added to it who need to work on it immediately. In such a case, people can jump into a huddle (audio or video call in Slack) to discuss the problem and possible solution.
Once the code is modified, one can give the command from Slack that the code should be pushed to production. Or if a peer review is needed, a developer can request it within the projects Slack channel so that two developers can review the code in a huddle.
Also read: Our experience in building a Digital HQ with Slack
Canvas is widely used to track project status
We understand that Bol employees also frequently use Slack Canvas. This mainly involves tracking project status: What will happen next week, which documentation is important, and what is the status of certain issues?
Because developers now work almost entirely from Slack and no longer have to switch between dozens of tools, they are a lot more productive. However, all the messaging does make it necessary to keep an overview. That’s where Canvas comes in. That’s where links to the most essential information, tickets and reports are often found.
Work experience of developers greatly improved
The work experience of Bol’s developers has improved significantly. This has increased Bol’s score as an employer and made it easier to retain desirable personnel. This is not unimportant at a time when many organizations want to innovate and need good developers.
By the way, that doesn’t mean they are done at Bol. They also realize that there is still room for improvement. For example, documentation is sometimes still a hot topic. Developers are not very fond of documentation, so it is often found in different places, whether in GitLab, Confluence, or Slack.
Moendir does see a role for it in all AI tools currently being released. Possibly, Slack AI could play a role in this soon, as could Rovo, Atlassian’s AI integrated into Jira.
Finally, many business teams at Bol work primarily with Microsoft Teams and not Slack. Some of those business users can certainly add value to the development process as well. Currently, there are no plans to bring them to Slack. Still, it is something to consider in the future, especially since it’s becoming increasingly important within organizations to narrow the gap between business and IT.