In lieu of super smart AI doing the work for us, IT projects would benefit from proper email management by the participants, explains Andrew Issaenko.
The combination of data collection and predictive intelligence is the holy grail of business transformation nowadays, with tons of money invested in IT solutions to enable it. Ironically, the biggest challenge in developing those IT solutions is a lack of predictive (or estimative) intelligence on work required and readiness dates. IT people like to say that business executives lack an understanding of IT. Another side of the coin is a lack of understanding by IT people for the business aspects, in particular the absence of a clear picture of other ongoing activities in the business. Often delivery dates shift at the last moment as required integration and alignment work wasn’t accounted for because nobody from IT tried to clarify related aspects until the very last moment.
Getting work under control means proactively avoiding all last-moment surprises by finding answers in advance and being able to provide any stakeholder with a clear, comprehensive and useful answer to any question that may be asked about work progress, technical status, challenges, decisions, and so on. This is especially worthwhile in highly regulated domains such as the medical or financial industry. Auditors want to see proof of conscious and transparent decision-making and event tracking as general prerequisites to stable and controlled R&D and production processes. Finding those proofs during an audit fast can mean a lot!
Despite the availability of different tools for structured information management and exchange, emails are still overwhelmingly used in the modern corporate world for ad-hoc and planned updates, discussions and all other types of information exchange. However, the majority of users barely manage their emails and struggle to connect all the dots when it’s urgently required. There’s a lot of potential in using structured email management to help get work under control.
The first step is forming a clear (non-contradictive) hierarchical picture of the ongoing/planned work items, which are represented as folders in which related emails are placed. For example, a list of folders for all teams working on the project on a high level with sub-folders for progress reporting, design discussions, investigations on issues and communication with external stakeholders within each team folder. Each folder may also have its own sub-folders for further classification of related items. The entire structure representing the total picture may have multiple nesting levels. It may evolve as new items come by and existing ones merge or split. However, the structure in its purpose shall always be easy to memorize and navigate, so all details of a particular work item/stream can be easily pulled out.
To enable easy pulling of required information later, each incoming and sent message is to be assigned to/placed in the appropriate place within this hierarchical structure. There’s no need to understand all the details or to decide which action/response (if any) is required. A quick conscious scan is sufficient to determine where in the structure an email shall be placed. This approach requires a bit of self-discipline and a bit of time/effort to follow it for each message. However, it pays off greatly, especially when any urgent action and information assembly is required, by allowing a quick dive into the specific part of the work with a clear picture of all developments and ongoing discussions. The work approach elevates from stressful ad-hoc escalation responses to tracking and proactive interference, so work affairs are really kept under control and escalations can be largely avoided.
Besides clearly structuring things that are already known, managing the email flow also helps uncover what’s unknown at a very early stage by cross-comparing available information in similar parts of the structure, identifying the information gaps and finding out the right questions to be asked to close those gaps. Thus, last-moment ‘information surprises’ can be avoided, although not entirely.
A similar approach for managing the email flow can also be used for managing the links to external documentation or personal notes. Building and supporting the hierarchical structure for email management is relatively easy although it takes time to master it most efficiently.
