# Communication Guidelines

# Communication Guidelines

Communication on a project is a notoriously hard problem to solve. It’s especially hard at a volunteer group like Open SGF. It’s the responsibility of each individual volunteer to ensure that they are doing their part to streamline communication and keep everyone on a project informed. This document provides guidelines for how to achieve that.


## What’s Important To Communicate?

When working on a project there are three key types of information to share: discussion, decisions and progress.

### Discussions

Discussions are the lifeblood of communication. They are often required in order to make progress on a project. While it’s not important to communicate every detail from a discussion, it is important to communicate the outcomes.

### Decisions 

This is maybe the most important piece of information to communicate. If others working on a project aren’t aware of the decisions that are being made, they will likely waste time and effort working on the wrong thing or working on the right thing incorrectly.

### Progress

Communicating progress on work is crucial. In many instances, one person’s work on a project has a major effect on other pieces of the work. It’s important that this information is shared with others on a project regularly.


## How Do We Communicate Important Things?

It’s important when communicating important information that the communication remains transparent. We use a variety of tools for communication. Here’s an overview of each and some guidelines on what to put in each to ensure communication.


* In Person Meetings
  * These are a great place to have synchronous project discussions. However it’s important that major decisions and outcomes are accessible afterwards.
  * These can also happen outside of regular Open SGF meetings, but it’s important to transparently communicate with others that a meeting is happening, where it will be, and what will be discussed. 


* Discord
  * Discord should be used as a mechanism for notifications to others on a project and a place to have discussions that don’t have an obvious place.
  * Avoid using DMs for discussions about the project. Opt instead to have it in the project channel but in a thread.
* Plane (and sometimes GitHub Projects)
  * This should be our source of truth for a projects progress. Because of that It’s important that tasks are kept up to date on their status.
  * It’s also important to note that this is a tool that’s common across developers and designers. This means that decisions that affect both should clearly be documented here.
    * This also means that this is the ideal place for questions and discussions between designers and developers
* Outline (docs.opensgf.org)
  * This is a tool that’s ideal for long form written documentation. It should be the primary place for
    * Meeting notes and agendas
    * Project requirements and documentation
    * Process related documentation
    * Contribution logs
      * A weekly status update written by each volunteer on their work specifically
* Github
  * The primary place for:
    * Source code
    * Technical requirements (ADRs) and technical documentation
    * Code reviews and resulting discussion
  * Developers should strive to be transparent about their progress by opening Draft Pull Requests ASAP and regularly pushing their code.
* Figma
  * This is the primary tool designers use for their work.
  * As designers are working together and need to communicate things to the other designers, they can and should use the Figma comments feature

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**Documents**

- [Resources](https://docs.opensgf.org/s/public-docs/doc/resources-EorSgc2dvK)
- [Guides](https://docs.opensgf.org/s/public-docs/doc/guides-0fwVNiDy3U)
- [Code of Conduct](https://docs.opensgf.org/s/public-docs/doc/code-of-conduct-4PjjJ5RgOx)
- [Communication Guidelines](https://docs.opensgf.org/s/public-docs/doc/communication-guidelines-d8Q0J1Aq6S)
- [Contributor License Agreement](https://docs.opensgf.org/s/public-docs/doc/contributor-license-agreement-QQD5dRG16m)
- [Meetings](https://docs.opensgf.org/s/public-docs/doc/meetings-qr5JkmQ5PC)
- [Process](https://docs.opensgf.org/s/public-docs/doc/process-OprR5ghMl8)