Communication within my team


I am working with three interns, three mentors, and one manager to develop a Microsoft Excel feature. Our primary tool of communication is Microsoft teams in the different channels created for the feature. Beyond Microsoft Teams, we also use Outlook emails for official emails to people outside the Excel team. Since my team's feature integrates Excel Desktop and Excel Online, we used Outlook emails to communicate with the Product managers who work on Excel exclusive features during the customer interviewing phase.
Although I had used Microsoft Teams to communicate during school projects, I had never used Teams this much. I have learned different features in Teams, like using the calendar embedded in Teams to set up calendar invites after knowing the availability of the attendees. There is also an easy way of knowing the organizational hierarchy of the company through Microsoft Teams. I have used this Organization tool to learn about different Microsoft organizations and schedule coffee chats with engineers working on various projects.
After a year of remote work and school, I find it easy to communicate in a virtual setting effectively. My team organizes daily stand-up meetings where we share our progress, challenges and talk about our experiences beyond the internship. Having an open communication channel has fostered communication within the team and contributed to our progress towards the project goals. Although I frequently meet with my team, I still find it a challenge to ask for help. I often waste time on small assignments trying to figure everything out on my own that I would have used to accomplish more if I reached out after a short time of failing. 

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