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Personal grudge toward the status quo
The main motivation for starting this Medium article series is for me to become less angry: less angry about not being able to take control of the tool at work or not being able to articulate “what is it about it” that makes me annoyed. And most important of all, about constantly thinking that “there is easily a better solution out there” but we are choosing to ignore or get over it. Well, I might not have been clear enough, but I am talking about my “being angry” about using Microsoft Teams at work as a collaboration tool. Having used Slack for three years across three institutions, I am currently having a hard time convincing myself that Teams has been the right choice.
I can see many reasons why Teams has become a choice adopted by leaders — its readily stable standing under the Microsoft Suite parent, its claimed integration to its sibling office tools, and of course, it’s free too. However, since our organization kicked Skype out (as the only place for chats outside of emails) and picked up Teams, the team has been encountering issue after issue. At first, a few team members and I brought up the possibility of adopting Slack to the team as a tool based on our past great experience with it; however, after a while, the fight became exhausting and in vain, since a lot of the times we were reminded that “it is not the tool; it’s the people.” I know we have to make compromises and commitments to the team and the directions…
