Email churn disaster

Posted by johnnypanics@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 12 comments

Working on a project for a completely non technical org, I'm the only technical person.

There was an email churn, and after having spent 4 months in this team I realized not everyone knows the entire picture of the project. I'm the only one it seems.

So I wrote an email on the thread, saying "apologies for the long email, but allow me to summarize the different discussions around this since there are a lot of moving parts to this. "

Deliverable 1 [ETA] I gave some technical details on why it takes this long (in hindsight, a paragraph on this was too much for a non technical audience) How mini deliverables are prioritized, linked to another doc for granular timelines
Deliverable 2 [ ETA], the main thing leader cares about, I'm not supporting this project entirely, only tangentially, but for some reason the ownership has fallen to me as there is no clear owner yet. 2 sentences here saying it will be done by that time per my estimates.

Addressed 3 additional points in comments (4-5 lines each, with a table for info).

I'm concerned that maybe I wrote too much. It's just a lot of people on the project are new, and I relaised even though I am only 4 months in I know more about this so I wanted to summarize the discussions, whether the leader cares or not.

Now I'm feeling embarrassed. Maybe I should not have gone so in depth.

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Western-Image7125@reddit

What’s the concern here? Why is this a “disaster”? If people don’t want to read na email cuz it’s too long - they won’t read it. From the title I thought you accidentally sparked one of those email avalanche things that ended up crashing the email server

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johnnypanics@reddit (OP)

Because the leadership asked a question but there were so many back and forth, I decided to address everything in one email, going above and beyond what they specifically asked. Just felt like they were asking the wrong question/focusing on a small thing since they didn't realize the full picture. I definitely addressed the question, but it now feels like I went overboard.

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Western-Image7125@reddit

You did great dude, why are you second guessing yourself? Instead of wasting time going back and forth you just threw the manual at everyone so they can read it and stop asking questions. This is tech lead behaviour right here, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise

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zeezbrah@reddit

Better to be embarassed than to be too scared to send emails. Even if people don't digest your email well, it still shows that you care and that you are trying.

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metaphorm@reddit

email is often not a very effective way to communicate, for various reasons.

do you have a knowledge base system at your org? something like Notion or Confluence or some kind of wiki? If you don't, I recommend setting something up. If you do, then I find it's a useful pattern to create a project page for each project and document the details there. That way, it's reusable, team editable, and not locked into someone's email account where it will become dead and buried in days.

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basically_alive@reddit

I feel this - I often do a 'short version' at the top and a 'more details if you want to dig deeper' type thing on longer emails, with the idea that I'm not necessarily expecting everyone to read it all.

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johnnypanics@reddit (OP)

I just highlighted the parts I know the audience cares about immediately. The rest, well at least it's there in writing if anyone later tries to bring it up

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