Managing EMail and Meetings
Fall 2010

by K. Yue

1. EMail Communications

Email communications have become both more critical and tricky. Several considerations:

• Critical communications are now done through email.
• The number of emails received everyday can be very large.
• EMail now serves as a central repository of important information. Email should be written and stored in a way for effective searching.
• EMail has become less reliable for various reasons, including being filtered by spam filter servers.

The capstone team is responsible for successful communications of the project. Thus, each team should derive a reliable system for effectively using email for communications with the instructor and the mentor, and among team members. Some hints follow.

Subject heading should be meaningful. The recipient should be able to grasp the main purpose of the email and search for it effectively. For example: the following sequence of subject headings has increasing usefulness. Comments are written inside the parenthesis.

Subject: (no heading: difficult to handle.)
Subject: Meeting tomorrow (ambiguous; not good for searching)
Subject: Meeting 9/1/2007 (better; but what kind of meeting...)
Subject: Mentor meeting 9/1/2007 2:30pm-5:00pm (better; but place...)
Subject: Mentor meeting 9/1/2007 2:30pm-5:00pm UHCL Capstone lab
Subject: Team #4 Mentor meeting 9/1/2007 2:30pm-5:00pm UHCL Capstone lab (better: the recipient almost does not need to read the email body. This is especially helpful to the instructor, who must deal with many teams.)
Subject: Agenda of Team #4 Mentor meeting 9/1/2007 2:30pm-5:00pm UHCL Capstone lab (now the recipient expects the agenda in the email body. Very searchable too.)

Some other examples:

Subject: Team #5: Questions on project Website requirements
Subject: Team #6: Request of meeting with the instructor during 9/2/2007 to 9/4/2007
Subject: Team #2: Encountered project account permission problems
Subject: Team #1: Reminder of project demonstration: 9/22/07 3:00 Capstone lab <eom>

Email delivery is no longer reliable. You cannot assume that the recipients always successfully receive your email. Communications can break down. To combat this problem, you should form a habit to acknowledge email, sometimes simply by replying with a "thank you" or "got it" note. There is a balance of limiting the proliferation of emails and acknowledgement.

If you have sent an email and receive no reply within a reasonable amount of time, send a follow-up email to remind the recipient tactfully. If you still do not receive any response, use other means, such as phone, instant messaging, physical visits, etc.

There should be a central point of contact with the mentor and instructor. The person may be the team leader. Having too many team members communicating with the mentor (customer) can be confusing, unprofessional and sometimes contradictory. When the team member communicates with the mentor and instructor, it is a good idea to copy to other team members. This will keep everyone informed and involved with the project.

Do not send email to the instructor and mentor on internal project communications among team members.

Do not use SMS style English. It is becoming very popular but is still not acceptable in many business communications setting.

2. Meetings

Effective meetings are keys to successful projects. It is the responsibility of the team to schedule and conduct meetings effectively.

Scheduling meetings are difficult and need careful planning. When the team leader schedules a meeting, it is not a good idea to send out email to everyone with no scheduling time slots, for example:

Subject: meeting
Body:

Hi everyone, what is a good time for the first mentor meeting?

This is unprofessional and difficult for the recipients to respond. Instead, the team should have met and agreed to a set of time slots for the mentor and the instructor to choose from, for example,

Subject: Team #4: Scheduling the first mentor meeting
Body:

Dear Mentor X and Instructor Y,

Our team would like to meet with you as soon as possible for our first mentor meeting. The following time slots are good for all of our team members:

8/23/07 (Thursday): 10:00am-11:30am; 4:00-5:30pm; 7:00-10:00pm
8/24/07 (Friday): 9:00am-6:00pm
8/27/06 (Monday): 11:30am-2:30pm; 6:00-10:00pm

Please let us know which time slots are acceptable to you at your early convenience.

Thanks.

Joe Smith
Team Leader, Capstone team #4
281-111-1111

You should copy this email to your team members. Again, if your team does not receive a response within a reasonable amount of time, send a follow up email and/or call.

Meticulous planning is essential for the success of a meeting. Do your homework! For examples, before the first mentor meetings, your team should ask for as much document as possible beforehand. Since one of the topic agenda items is likely the initial understanding of the project requirements and scope, the team should study these documents and compose a list of key questions. These questions can be sent as part of the agenda.

It is a good idea to send meeting agenda one or two days before the meeting so the participants can prepare accordingly. The agenda should clearly list the issues to be discussed, together with supporting materials, such as the list of initial questions on requirements in the first mentor meeting.

The team leader is usually in charge of conducting the meeting. It is important to ensure that every team member participates actively. Planning would help. For example, the list of questions can be divided up among the team members. Team members should continue to ask questions until everyone understands. Write down notes throughout the meeting.

Before the end of the meeting, the team leader should briefly summarize the meeting and list all action items with the responsible party.

Immediately after the mentor meeting or the instructor meeting, the team should get together and compare note. This is to ensure that every team member has the same understanding. Questions and concerns should be discussed immediately.

Minutes should be written as soon as possible, recording the result of the meetings: information items, decisions, rationale behind the decisions, action items, etc. The minutes should have sufficient details to be useful. It should not simply record what happened in the meeting, such as "we discussed the requirement specifications". Instead, decisions and supporting rationale should be detailed.

The minutes should be sent to the mentor and instructor as soon as possible. Ask them to comment on the minutes. This is to ensure that the team, the mentor and the instructor have the same understanding. Minutes should be posted in the project's Website as soon as possible.