  We report on a longitudinal case study conducted at the Italian site of a
large software company to further our understanding of how development and
communication tools can be improved to better support agile practices and
collaboration. After observing inconsistencies in the way communication tools
(i.e., email, Skype, and Slack) were used, we first reinforced the use of Slack
as the central hub for internal communication, while setting clear rules
regarding tools usage. As a second main change, we refactored the Jira Scrum
board into two separate boards, a detailed one for developers and a high-level
one for managers, while also introducing automation rules and the integration
with Slack. The first change revealed that the teams of developers used and
appreciated Slack differently with the QA team being the most favorable and
that the use of channels is hindered by automatic notifications from
development tools (e.g., Jenkins). The findings from the second change show
that 85\% of the interviewees reported perceived improvements in their
workflow. Despite the limitations due to the single nature of the reported
case, we highlight the importance for companies to reflect on how to properly
set up their agile work environment to improve communication and facilitate
collaboration.
