Communications Basics

The SCM Communications page deals with the theory of communications in the context of SCM. Let's give a try to practice—just applying it.

Communications happen in a context. There is an issue, there are symptoms, there is an urgency...

1. Make it objective.
   • Log it, in a public place, so that there is no ambiguity about what the symptoms were, what one is dealing with, and what not.
   • Log it now, when you still have the evidence—it may well disappear. You will want to access it later.
   • Take care that the representation is versioned, so that reading it now is not a waste of time for somebody who might read it again later, after it has been updated: diffs must be available
2. Make is reproducible, by others, elsewhere.
   • I.e. narrow it down. There is a compromise here, between urgency and importance. A tradeoff between spending time and effort now, and wasting it later.
   • Haste may even be waste of time now: careful handling does not necessarily take more time.
3. Afterwards, try to sum up what was learnt, i.e. to produce documentation from the log of communications (not destroying it)
   • Remember there is a price to read, so make sure the benefit is higher then the cost. What would have saved time when there was an urgency?
   • How to make it possible to decide fast that the piece of documentation is irrelevant, and to drive to the next one, by helping to better formulate the queries?

-- MarcGirod - 24 Jun 2008