AYH project director Paul Phillips kicked off a debate about the usefulness or otherwise of email in project management in our last issue. He felt emails were a distraction to running a live project as you lose what your priorities are on the job and waste time replying to or penning emails. MDA director Emlyn Jones certainly agreed (see letter) listing his dislike for the communication form. A majority of QS News readers disagree, according to a web poll on our site, with nearly two thirds of you claiming email helps rather than hinders project management. If you have any more thoughts, email us at qsnews@cmpi.biz

Unplug, or become unhinged

Emails are definitely a curse and should be banned in terms of project communication. The main complaints being:

• need to constantly review and up-date

• difficulty in maintaining an audit trail for prompt and comprehensive retrieval

• scatter gun copying to individuals on the periphery who should really be out of the communication loop

• the assumption, on the part of the sender, that the email will be read and retrieved by the appropriate person within an appropriate time

• concealed messages to a copied individual who, by inference, is expected to register and respond to a requirement not properly addressed to that individual.

I could go on and on.

Quite how to deal with the issue is not apparent unless we revert to post-delivered correspondence, faxes and telephone calls.

An additional point is - wasted paper. Often a message of a few words may be tagged on to a screed of previous messages littered with disclaimers and spurious text. The result is reams of wasted paper unless one culls out before printing.

I am seriously considering being unplugged before becoming unhinged.

Emlyn Jones, director, MDA Consulting

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