Why, Who, What, Where, When?

When technical work or changes are carried out it is useful to have an email template to send out to staff to tell them what is happening. As long as the distribution list used contains all the people who need to know it works well.

1. Why are we doing it? What is the problem we are trying to solve?
   First of all we start with why are we doing it? Why are we making the change? What is our reasoning? What problem are we trying to solve? what service are we trying to improve?
2. Who is doing the work? Who will be affected?
   Secondly a list of people carrying out the work and all those affected.
3. What exactly are we doing?
   Thirdly the technical task in simple terms. Nobody likes an overly technical general communications.
4. Where are we doing the work?
   The geographical location of the work. Will this affect anyone at that location?
5. When are we doing the work?
   This is the point where we let those users know we are taking systems offline at a certain point in time and they should go and relax while we make things better for them.

It is easy to maintain a high standard of communication and makes changes and tasks that may affect users and infrastructure go a lot more smoothly.

How do you communicate? Leave a comment below…