3 ms·
I have worked remotely a lot and I've always tried to reduce the overhead of communication by actually doing stuff rather than saying I'll do it, etc. I.e. rath
by ojbyrne 17y ago
I have worked remotely a lot and I've always tried to reduce the overhead of communication by actually doing stuff rather than saying I'll do it, etc. I.e. rather than
I'll look at it
....
Looking at it
....
Working on it
....
Done.
I try as much as possible to do
<longer delay>
Done.
Mostly because of "The Mythical Man-Month." Some people don't deal well with it, though.
- litewulf 17y agoI find that this means there is an ambiguity between "I have not read this email" and "I am working on this" Also, certain things that need to be done can be done by multiple people, so a "I am working on it" email is a good locking mechanism. (I usually say "I'll look at it", delay, "Done" to remove some ambiguity.)
- benmathes 17y agoI think both you and the parent poster make valid points. The key thing is to send something vague-enough in the first email. For example, don't say "I think that's a problem with X and I'm looking into it", just say "I'm looking at it". In other words, only communicate the lock you're acquiring on the task and save the rest for the "done" email.
- ojbyrne 17y agoSure. It's all about judgement as to whether setting that lock adds too much overhead to be efficient. If it's a small enough task, it doesn't matter if multiple people do it.
- nostrademons 17y agoThis is why bugtrackers have separate "Accepted" and "Fixed" states. :-)