Mambo Developer

Communication

Good communication is the key to building a successful project where team members work remotely, often spread all over the world.

Communication Tools

These are the tools we use to communicate with each other:

Forums

The forums are currently our primary method of communication. Team Mambo has private forums where we can discuss matters and plan our activities in private. Team issues should be discussed in private. Ideas, plans, and development should be discussed in the public arena to encourage as much community input as possible.

You can find the forums at http://forum.mambo-foundation.org

Please subscribe to the forums for your teams and try to keep up with all that is posted there. You can set your UserCP Options to send you an email or digest for all posts on the forums you subscribe to.

We have recently introduced developer mailing lists for easier communication amongst developers and intend mailing lists to take over from the forum as our primary communication tool.

Mailing List

The mailing lists can be found at: http://mambo-developer.org/mailman/listinfo

Instant Messaging

Team and MSC meetings are conducted through IM. This enables discussions to be held in real time.

IM and Skype are also used for informal chats and personal talk. Group informal discussions are also conducted by these methods.

Email

Used for personal or individual communication.

Internet Relay Chat

The Mambo IRC Channel is currently not operating. We are investigating the need for IRC channels and may get Internet Relay Chat running again in the future.

Communication issues to be aware of.

Time zones

Having team members working in different time zones is one of the most frustrating and challenging aspects of being involved in a distributed team network. Team members may be separated by time zones that are very different, for example we may have team members in times that are UTC -12, others that are UTC+13, and everyone else spread in-between. Time differences can mean that some team members are working on, for example, a Friday when you are still in Thursday. This is just something we all have to get used to and work around.

Keep time zone differences in mind when you post on the forums or send a message to the team mailing lists. It may be many hours before all team members get to read your messages.

Please take care of yourself; it is very easy to wait around hour after hour just to get in contact with others who may be on the other side of the globe.

Team meetings are scheduled at times when the greatest number of team members may participate. It is not always possible to arrange meetings at times that suit everyone however team leaders try to ensure that everyone is accommodated.

Language and Cultural Barriers

Projects will come up against differences in language and culture in either the user community or within the membership of teams. There is no escaping this; it is a fact of life in any multinational, multicultural, multilingual project with a large community.

When you are reading posts on a forum, submissions to a mailing list or even reading personal mail from another person who is not writing in their native language, you need to be sensitive to the fact that their translated dialogue may not mean what they are trying to say. Misunderstanding can occur. Even among English speakers, miscommunication can occur when local phrases are used that may not mean the same thing (or anything) to the people reading the post or email.

The best way to deal with this is to remember that the other person is unlikely to have wanted to cause offence. If you are unsure of just what the person intended to convey, ask for clarification. If there is a genuine conflict, seek advice from your team leader or ask the Community Relations team leader to help.