e-mails are an ephemeral and noisy communication medium. There are many tools available to manage inboxes. To sort, fılter, and generate chains of related topics (usually by using the "subject" field.) To export text to other issue management tools. And Vice-versa. We even can see the future of smart tools to "understand" content. Despite all of this technology, the fact remains that e-mails are filled with stuff related to the personal relationship among parties to the conversation. Niceties. Not-so-niceties. Posturing. Informational content gets polished by fluff. Further, e-mails play out a jumbled temporal sequence. First he said this. Then she said that. Some people make comments in-line to the most recent e-mail. Others summarize the key issues at the top. Still others choose to reply to e-mails, which were sent well before the current state of the discussion. For all of the technical advances, it is really hard to extract the core business value from the morass of mixed up content. How can we possibly think that we can make sense of what needs to get done and why, when and by whom on the basis of e-mails?
Make sure your company invests in an issue tracking system to help resolve the mixed-up messaging problem. Issue tracking systems have 5 key properties:
- A repository to store recall discreet issues, and a flexible way to extract and vısualize data
- Workflow defining the stages of handling the issue and current status
- A flexible and extensible data model and workflows, allowing you to customize the issue contents and handling.
- Issue ownershıp allowing orderly serial transfer of ownershıp between people
- A curated comment stream allowing people to register comments in a strictly sequential manner
Your customer support group should already have a system in place for trouble ticket management. Take a look at a comparison of such systems. I have used to good effect the following: JIRA, bugzilla, and the Lexus, FogBugz from Fog Creek Software.
Getting a tool, however, is not enough. You are investing in a critical business asset. You also need to appoint someone to manage both the business process design and operations. Invest some time to define some simple structures and rules for using these tools: access control lists for internal and external users of the system, issue classification (requirements, features, action items by category, project tasks, etc.), and mandatory fields in each of the issue categories. Except for those tools that support native, full-featured project management, don't try to use these tools for project management. Full-featured means having a convenient ability to express dependencies among different issues or tasks: when you make a change to one task, other dependent tasks should change in a predictable manner. Comment streams supported by most of these tools have the advantage over e-mails because they typically enforce a strict sequencing of comments. But take some time to define some simple rules about what is in a comment. In this context, a comment is not a conversation; it is ınformation that adds value to handling the issue.
Fınally, insist that an executive of your company send an e-mail to everyone saying that that no business will be conducted on the basis of e-mails. If the issue is important enough to require attention over time, then a record will be in the issue tracking system. The best way to do this is to say that no action will be taken on any task that is not in the tracking system.
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