Indeed but isn't this a subject to change? I understand that Relic wants to be safe regarding the delay but we're not talking about 8 minutes compared to no delay but rather a decent 3 minute delay like in other comparable observer modes.
I don't know if there are any plans to implement this but it would be really cool with an "observer chat" so you can discuss a current game with other viewers.
I don't think 3 minutes in COH2 would be enough. (but I could be wrong) We did some tests and asked for quite some feedback from casters and players and the general consensus was that mines/demo charges, as a core aspect of the COH2 gameplay, deserve a lot of respect, and 3 minutes are not enough to be sure they would be blown up already. It is hard to pull out a right number because on one side you want to offer a "as close to live" experience to viewers, but on the other side you have to make sure players can't be exploited.
I spectate pretty much every day matches of League of Legends using their built-in obs mode (with 3 minutes delay) and I really believe 3 minutes is the perfect delay there. I also know from playing with friends that often some information that are apparently irrelevant become immensely important. Let me give an example: right now in COH2 the meta is dominated by call-ins based strategies. By having a 3 minute delay in the automatch the information you could give to another player are immense: doctrine picked (which is probably one of those things with the highest impact), tech choice, mines placement.
I believe that Relic wants to go super-safe right now and go with 8 minutes to make sure it's impossible to have players communicate with observers in the automatch. After a first period of tests I would be totally up to propose Relic to lower the delay to about 5-6 minutes (if it's possible) and see how it turns out.
Overall tho it's irrelevant: since you are not supposed to interact with players in the automatch but just spectate games with specific tools the delay could even be 1 hour.
What instead I think should be in the game is a way to let observers feel more involved when spectating, like being able to see mouse clicks and even players camera movement (like SC2) but I have no idea if it's possible.
To answer your question, "Observing as a Party" feature should allow you to chat with the friends in your group while spectating the game while also being in sync with each other.
Since spectators in the automatch won't be in sync this means that there would be no point to allow them to chat because they could be watching totally different moments of a game.
That said, on tournaments (that are based on custom games) it will definitely be possible for you and your friends to spectate games (if allowed by the game host) and chat together.