Sofware Management Antipatterns: E-Mail is Dangerous

Using e-mail is an important communication tool in software companies, but performing communications mostly with e-mail is dangerous. In this post, this issue will be detailed together with common e-mail mistakes. This information can be generalized for most types of companies.

E-mails may be used for some kind of situations:

• For sending a report, meeting record etc. which is not confidential, to a manager or a group.
• For sending a short message which is not urgent, to a person who can’t be accessed via telephone and face-to-face.

E-mails should NOT be used for these situations:

• For confidential messages and criticisms: E-mails can be distributed to other people or large groups easily, so this is not a good idea.
• For situations  which could be used as evidence in a court of law : For example, if you say “We will do X item in a month” to the customer with e-mail, it can be a mandatory item for you in the next days.
• For explaining a complex topic: It will be time consuming to write hundreds of words. Speaking will be more effective.
• For explaining an important, sensitive topic: Word emphasis, voice tone, gestures and mimics are very important for conversations. E-mails have none of them and this may cause misunderstandings.

And some e-mail suggestions:

•  Don’t use e-mail bodies as title, this is ridiculous:

Title: Please send me a report about X task.
Body: nothing

•  Don’t put hundreds of people to your e-mail’s “TO” or “CC” list. Use BCC. Otherwise all people and spam softwares will know all e-mails:

To:a1@a.com, a2@b.com, ... , a1000@z.com
CC:a1001@z1.com, …, a2345@zz.com

• Don’t use infinite forwards for e-mails. These type of mails are not funny for most people.

To: hundreds of people
Title: FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:…

• Don’t use e-mails as FTP. Use a file transfer protocol for sending messages larger than a few MB. A common wrong usage:

Attachments: AnImportantDocument.pdf (123 MB)

• Don’t use e-mails as a version controlling system. Manage your documents with a real version controlling system:

Attachments:  “CustomerReport_last_20122010_newest_veryVeryLast_1_1.doc”.

• Don’t use so many smiley images, big signature images, long signatures, colorful decoration templates in your e-mail. These are generally disgusting and unnecessary. Besides, they will increase network load.

Sources:

·         http://sourcemaking.com/antipatterns/e-mail-is-dangerous

·         http://www.dzone.com/links/r/if_you_do_this_in_an_email_i_hate_you.html