RDEL #95: What does effective coordination look like in distributed software teams?
Distributed teams that pair efficient meetings with clear Slack norms reduce ambiguity, lower message volume, and align faster.
Welcome back to Research-Driven Engineering Leadership. Each week, we pose an interesting topic in engineering leadership, and apply the latest research in the field to drive to an answer.
As engineering teams spread across time zones, coordination becomes a balancing act between responsiveness and deep work. With Slack threads piling up and meetings crossing time zones, the real challenge isn’t communication—it’s coordination. This week we ask: What does effective coordination look like in globally distributed teams—and how should teams balance meetings and async tools like Slack?
The context
Time zone differences are one of the most persistent challenges for modern software teams. As companies scale globally, they face a new version of an old problem: how to stay aligned without overwhelming developers with meetings, context-switching, or Slack fatigue.
Engineering leaders often assume Slack offers a flexible, always-on solution—but asynchronous tools come with tradeoffs. Slack can support distributed work, but it can also increase noise, create decision ambiguity, and shift communication from structured alignment to reactive pinging. Meetings, meanwhile, remain a go-to for coordination—but they’re hard to schedule, especially across regions. Striking the right balance is no longer about preference. It’s about productivity.
The research
Researchers conducted a mixed-methods study of 10 globally distributed engineering teams. The study combined surveys, observations, interviews, and analysis of Slack chat logs, encompassing over 430,000 messages across 200 participants. They examined how teams use communication tools to manage three types of coordination: situational awareness, task division, and temporal alignment.
Key findings:
Time spent in meetings: Engineers averaged 7 hours and 45 minutes in scheduled meetings and 8 hours and 54 minutes in unscheduled meetings per week—totaling nearly 17 hours weekly on coordination.
Statistics around time spent in meetings per day
Meetings are used to resolve ambiguity and plan work. Teams relied on synchronous conversations to reinforce shared understanding and navigate complex cross-team dependencies.
Slack excels at lightweight, real-time awareness. Teams used Slack for quick clarifications, status updates, and to stay looped into team activity—especially when time zones didn’t overlap.
Rituals matter. Teams that held recurring weekly meetings reported a lower volume of Slack messages and reduced need for constant clarification. This suggests that establishing regular sync points can reduce async coordination burdens.
Asynchronicity trades immediacy for traceability. Slack messages are fast but fragmented. Meetings are slower but support deeper alignment and documentation when paired with clear outcomes.
The application
This study reinforces the need for engineering leaders to intentionally design communication rhythms—balancing real-time updates with structured alignment and lasting documentation.
To improve coordination and reduce tool fatigue, consider the following ideas:
Establish a consistent cadence of structured meetings. Weekly or biweekly syncs focused on planning, decisions, and status alignment can significantly reduce back-and-forth in Slack and clarify ownership. These meetings are especially critical for resolving ambiguity and aligning across functions or time zones.
Define Slack channel purposes and norms. High-volume messaging is inevitable in distributed teams—but leaders can reduce noise by making expectations clear. Set guidance on when to use threads, where to post decisions, and how to escalate complex issues.
Make decisions findable. Slack is ephemeral. Encourage teams to document key decisions and rationales in shared tools like Confluence, Notion, or project management systems. This improves traceability and helps new team members ramp up faster.
With the right mix of synchronous structure and asynchronous discipline, engineering leaders can reduce fragmentation—while preserving the speed and flexibility remote teams need.
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Happy Research Tuesday!
Lizzie