In message , at 12:08:14 on
Wed, 2 Jan 2008, Andrew Gabriel remarked:

There are lots of ways to do this, and they mostly scale better
and produce more consistent results than relying on off-chance
over-heard conversations.

To do it physically does requires a departmental organisation with
perhaps a maximum of a dozen people within constant earshot.

Many of them will be busy at any one time (one hopes) or out of
the office on occasions. Relying only

I've never suggested "relying" let alone "only", but it's a very good
way to increase effectiveness - compared to everyone sitting isolated
from one another, whether that's in different houses or different
hermetically sealed rooms in the same building.

on overheard conversations
and rumour-style dissemination of information isn't reliable even
when everyone does work in the same office.

Email is not the only tool, although it is an important one.

I've never seen any tool that came even close to scraping teleworking
and spreading hints around a dispersed group. If I did see one I know of
several people who are trying to run entirely 'remote' collaborative
working who'd be very interested.

Mostly I've used custom tools, either because the company was
large enough to commission its own, or because it was silly
enough to spend its limited resources writing its own.

However, most workflow tools are going to be able to operate
remotely. Depending on what your team is doing, something like
Quality Center, Remedy, or a helpdesk application (names escape
me) is likely to work. Even something as simple as a team mailing
list or local/internal newsgroups can work well (I've used both
on different occasions). Some teams claim to find things like
a private IRC channel useful, although I haven't found them so,
and they can be a disaster if the team is all working different
timezones.

Remedy I have seen. Car crash doesn't even come close.

We seem to be talking about such different situations that I don't think
the concepts are transferable at all. More 24x7 brainstorming than
production.

I have used local/internal newsgroups for discussions about
design and implementation of projects, and found that to work
well. It wouldn't suit every case of course.

Can be good, as a way to archive selected gems from a larger discussion

It can be a lot more effective than meetings, where people often come
along not having read the material and waste everyone's time as a
result.

These would be mainly formal internal meetings? My overhear-ware is
quite like a continuous informal meeting. For external meetings it
depends who you are selling what. But I agree that you can't plan on
anyone having read anything ahead of time. That's why verbal
presentations, rapidly tailored to what you learn about the audience's
state of comprehension, can often be the best way to get your point
over.
--
Roland Perry