Email collaboration?

Dan Randow recently asked "Is Email Killing Collaboration".  He concluded

This preliminary investigation has confirmed my hunches that people are stuck with email and that email is not great for collaboration. But they seem not to be bothered by that. This raises more questions than it answers."

I'm going to describe the situation at the technology company where I work, as one 'data point' in the collaboration space.   I'm certainly not holding it up as a great role model though ;)

I also conclude that while email has its weaknesses, it can't be avoided...

Geographical/functional:

New Zealand E - software/hardware engineer USA west coast S - VP engineering, hardware engineer, manager, some software H - technician K - operations (organising making and shipping stuff) D - accounts USA East 1 A - software T - software R - test, support USA East 2 G - CEO, sales N - sales Spain X - software Singapore P - Sales

With this amount of physical and timezone separation, the opportunity for real-time collaboration is limited, so needs support from tools...

Tools:

• email
• wiki (private TWiki, can send change notifications by email)
• issue tracker (private Eventum)
• IM - skype, private jabber server with conference rooms, logging
• VOIP - private SIP provider
• software repository (sends email notifications, checkins linked to issues)

Eventum was chosen primarily because it allows interaction with customers using only email (Employees can access the web interfaces.) Issues are created directly from customer emails, all subsequent emails are associated with the issue. So, when e.g. a new engineer is assigned to an issue, the whole history is available. Notifications are sent by email (e.g. reminders, new issue created)

Tool usage email : everybody wiki : I think everyone can access. main editors are engineers though. eventum: engineers + support IM: some engineers, though S refuses to use it, which makes it less useful VOIP: used for engineering 'meetings, available to engineers + G

Commentary:

• Email is the only medium guaranteed to reach everybody
• Email is used for direct communication, but also to inform about changes in the wiki and issue tracker
• Often a discussion that starts in email gets moved to the wiki when it gets too long or complex
• However, stuff also gets buried in the wiki, because it is not 'in your face'
• VOIP conferences can be good, but often are wasting the time of at least half the participants.  E has noted that a weakness off VOIP calls is that no minutes or recordings are kept.  The wide time separation limits the opportunity for global collaboration.
•   I set up the jabber server with the following thoughts. (So far, I'd say it is not a success because one potential important participant won't use it for fear of 'being interrupted all the time' and 'because I can't touch type')

1. take advantage of near-real-time communication (phone-like)
2. conversation could be logged for later review/audit (email-like)
3.  persistent conference rooms to 'meet' in. (senders don't determine receivers)
4.  private (compared to e.g. skype,msn,gtalk)

• With email, the sender chooses who will receive it, while with IM and wikis, they rely on readers actively choosing to "receive" the conversation.