IT Directions

I promised in a previous post to explain more about the free HumanEdj software that will be available in a month or two. Why should you be interested?

You might not be - if you are one of the few people who use the Web but not email. But if you are like the rest of us, and depend on email for collaboration with colleagues, then you need HumanEdj. Even if you don't yet realize it.

There is an old joke - for some people, email gets in the way of their work. For others, it is their work. As far back as 2003, the BBC claimed that the average length of time per day spent just reading (not responding to) email was 2 hours. In 2005, the average number of emails received per day was 133 (Radicati Group). Going on observations made at the sites of my consultancy clients, I would be very surprised to find that these averages have decreased since then. Many organizations seem to run on email, even more than the telephone - take email away and they would grind to a halt.

This ancient set of protocols (SMTP, POP, IMAP and X.400), intended originally only for communication among researchers working in the same lab, now underpins the modern workplace in the same way as the electronic funds transfer standards ISO 8583 and ISO 7810 now underpin commerce. When you consider that the above figures are averages, it is clear that many people spend most of their working life doing email.

This makes it all the more surprising that email is so fundamentally broken as a workplace tool. To take just one example, everyone knows how hard it is to find old emails. Filtering into folders is incredibly hard work to set up and maintain, and doesn't usually apply to sent emails anyway. Simple searching of unfiltered emails is not much better, since both techniques are based on searching for keywords in some part of the email - sender name, subject contents, date, etc. Yet keywords are no true guide to the context of the message. Two messages may have the same sender and date, and even contain some of the same words in the subject line, yet concern quite different matters - 2 unrelated shipments from the same supplier, for example.

At the most primitive level, people need a better way of grouping emails - into work processes - and to have this grouping done automatically. People would like attachments to be associated with these processes, rather than scattered all over their filesystem. Different versions of these attachments should be related to one another, and proper version control provided. People also need to see higher-level information such as which messages are still awaiting reply, and which documents are awaiting perusal, both by them and by their colleagues.

Going further than just messaging, a key use of email is to agree on actions with colleagues - so this should also be made clear. Proposals for next steps (effectively, work process descriptions) should be clearly identified, along with information such as which proposals have been accepted and by whom. It should be possible to send progress reports and associate them with such process descriptions. Going further, why not provide an interface to the activities themselves from the messaging system, if that is where the activities were defined?

Related to action management is a common problem in the enterprise workplace - what I call the "global CC nightmare". Someone has an issue that they cannot personally resolve, but they are not sure who is the right person to pass it on to. So they CC a mixed bunch of people, hoping that someone will pick up the baton, and in doing so safeguard themselves against a later accusation of inaction. In effect they clear their own desk, at the expense of creating an unholy mess in which responsibility for the issue is totally lost. It is quite likely that either nothing will get done, or competing efforts to deal with the issue will derail each other. To alleviate this, it is necessary to add "opt-in" and "opt-out" functionality to messaging, so that people can declare their (un)willingness to take part in something to the others potentially involved.

Finally, there is the whole quagmire of Business Intelligence. What sorts of information can be gathered from messaging? It should be clear even from the above brief discussion that a huge amount of highly valuable information about staff activities is currently hidden from a manager's view.

TAKE AWAY

If you want efficiency in the 21st century workplace, email is the place to look. Although many office workers spend a large part of their working day using email, it is neither an efficient tool nor a useful source of management information.

Fortunately, new software tools are emerging. Underpinned by the principles and patterns of Human Interaction Management, the new version of HumanEdj brings to fruition ideas developed in response to a global need for better collaboration. HumanEdj sits on top of your current email system(s), integrating seamlessly with them to provide the higher-level features that make it possible to work better. Further, it is a simple client program, requiring in most cases zero configuration - download and install it, then it will automatically work out your name, connect to your email client, load your address book, and so on.

Despite this, previous versions of HumanEdj have presented a rather forbidding interface to the novice, requiring people to learn and use new terminology. However, the new HumanEdj 3 provides a radically revised and simplified user interface, based on feedback from early adopters - you now get the benefits without having to acquire the theory! If you are interested in trying out a pre-release version, see the Web forum for details and feel free to contact me - by email, of course ;-)

HumanEdj 3 is now available for download. A short demo video is also available.