Collateral Bloggage

17-OCT-2008

EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS

Dear Employee,

In the interest of improving our workforce’s productivity, the Board of Directors, in cooperation with the CEO, COO, CFO, and CMO of Incorporated Corporation Corp, Inc., have decided on a plan of action.  New tools for source code management, documentation, and defect tracking will be rolled out company-wide.

The new tools, bought at great expense from a competing company, will be deployed across all work groups starting this month.  The process of deployment will take approximately three years.  At that time, we will reassess to find out if there is another set of tools which would better suit our needs.

During deployment, all employees of the targeted organization will be asked to attend mandatory training (five employees at a time) for three continuous weeks, including weekends.  Employees will be encouraged not to leave company property for the duration of the training.  Some consideration will be given to short breaks for meals and personal hygiene.

Prior to the training roll-out, employees and work groups will be asked to end-of-life all current systems for source code management, documentation and defect tracking.  No additional working on source code or documentation will be permitted during the switchover to the new system.  This should dovetail nicely with the total restriction on entering new defects against source code or documentation during the roll-out.

Some employees may balk at these policies, preferring to do, as they would say, “Real, actual work.”  The officers of the board and the chief operating officers of this corporation would like to respond to this sentiment.  To that end, there are building maps attached to this memo, detailing where the doors are.

The next three years will be difficult, as all employees are asked to stop using the tools they are familiar with and start using new ones arbitrarily chosen by higher-ups who do not understand the kind of work they do.  But, in the end, the company will be more efficient for having taken this time to move toward more efficiency.

Managers, please forward this memo to all your direct reports.  Admins, please forward out to your entire department.  Managers, upon receipt of the forwarded memos from your admins, please forward out again to your direct reports, but with “FYI” at the top of the message.  This is the first step toward greater efficiency.

All individual employees are encouraged to print a hard copy of this memo.  In addition, you may wish to bind it on your hands and/or foreheads, to post it on the doorway into your cubicle, to talk about it when you get up and when you sit down and as you walk the hallways.

Discovered, printed, crumpled, thrown away, retrieved, pressed, and posted outside the cubicle of: O. Handwasher