How to obtain faster responses from remote coworkers?

Question

I am the sole developer on a 6 year old project involving multiple platforms. I have taken over maintaining this project and adding new features. In attempting to accomplish certain tasks, such as integrating a new data source, I find myself stuck in a complex (failing) build process, which results in a lot of error messages, missing files, and generally processes that I can't understand just by reading the code. There is very little documentation to how these processes are supposed to work, and there is very little documentation in the code itself.

All that said, I often have to email the previous developer who worked on the project to ask them questions about why X is failing to Y, or where is Z and what is it supposed to be doing? The problem is, this person has a full-time job and other responsibilities and is working as a part-time 'technical advisor'. They often takes 4-7 days to respond to emails (that I send approximately once every 3 weeks).

However, I must have deliverables every week - since I get stuck and can't proceed without the input of the previous developer, I sit around essentially accomplishing nothing. I also can't just walk over to this person's desk and ask directly because they don't live anywhere near me.

In the past, my boss has directly elevated the issue, but it usually takes him 3-5 days to do so, which isn't fast enough to solve the issue.

What are some methods of soliciting a faster response time from remote coworkers? This could be via email, Skype, etc. - are there methods that people generally respond to more quickly?

Answer 1

Your company/manager either just accepts that things will take longer or they need to provide the incentive to this part-time consultant.

People working another full-time job are not available and often don't have the energy to put in the extra time you need. Somehow they need to be incentivized and I doubt you have the resources or authority to provide it.

To be honest, I'm having a hard time believing that if you spend the 3-5 days actually reviewing the code instead of waiting for an answer, you couldn't be able to do more of this yourself. Repeat this enough times and you should be able to absorb quite a bit. Not surprised your manage hasn't caught on to this.

Answer 2

There is a colloquialism for what you're doing: It's called "Rearranging the chairs on the Titanic."

You need to focus your efforts on getting your build processes working reliably, and automatically, before you do ANY feature development. If your boss doesn't understand that, your whole organization is in serious trouble.

There is a reason why this is #2 on The Joel Test. If you can't build with a single step, and then deploy to your different environments (Dev, Test, Stage, Beta, Live) with another single step, you're going to be chasing this problem the rest of your time there.

Getting the consultant to answer is going to be less and less effective, as the longer he works on something else, the less he'll remember about this project. The "Technical Adviser" role is probably just to give you time to get things under control for yourself. Get things under control for yourself ASAP.

Answer 3

There is very little you can do. This is your managers or bosses problem to solve, not yours. So you need to let them know, and you need to keep pushing. I have been in the previous developers shoes.

Unless someone was throwing bundles of money at me I wouldn't bother answering. It's up to your manager to motivate the previous developer.