Waiting
Batching Questions Instead of Sending Each One
Questions that occur one at a time need not be sent one at a time, and across a large offset the difference between six messages and one is a fortnight.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
Us, Hamburg, sending the chases
Chases get written on our Monday and our Friday
The supplier receiving them, Taipei
Our Friday afternoon is their Saturday, which is a working day
two parties · five days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
The two days on which chases are habitually written here are the two worst days to send them to either of the counterparties in these notes.
A useful pilot starts with a baseline rather than a guess; teams can visit the product website and compare capacity before and after changing a handoff or overlap window.
Teams can compare this approach with the established guidance available from African Union.
One supplier, and four ways the same kind of question went out
Six questions sent one at a time as they occurred
14 / 8Six of the fourteen days were not working days on their side: two weekends, and one question that arrived on their Monday holiday. Six round trips, about twenty minutes of their work in total
The same six questions sent as one numbered list
2 / 2Both days of this wait were working days on their side. One round trip, answered in a single sitting the following morning
A seventh question that genuinely could not wait
1 / 1The one day of this wait was a working day on their side. Sent on its own, marked as such, and answered within the hour
A later set of four questions sent as a list
3 / 2One of the three days was not a working day on their side: one weekend. Answered completely, with one of the four flagged as needing a colleague
four waits · 20 calendar days · 13 of them working days on the other side
The same work, the same supplier and the same total effort on their side. What differed was the number of times the item had to cross a nine-hour offset. One team's own job.
Questions occur one at a time. That is not a reason to send them one at a time.
Across a nine-hour offset, six questions sent as they occur cost about a fortnight. The same six in one numbered list cost two days, and the work on the other side is identical.
Why they get sent singly
Because sending is the moment the question stops being your problem. Holding it feels like sitting on something, and there is a real worry that a question held will be forgotten.
There is also a sense that a single question is easier for the recipient to deal with than six, which is true per message and false in total: six separate messages require six context switches, six reconstructions of what the project is, and six replies.
The holding place
Batching only works if there is somewhere to put a question that is not the outbox, and the somewhere has to be reliable enough that holding a question does not feel like losing it.
A short list per counterparty is enough. Not a system — a list, in whatever already exists, with the date the question arose and who needs the answer. The discipline is to add to it rather than to send, and to send the whole list at a fixed point.
When to send
A daily cut-off works better than a weekly one for anything live. Last thing before the end of your day, if they are behind you; first thing, if they are ahead.
That means the longest any question waits is about a working day on this side, which is almost always shorter than what it would have waited in their queue anyway.
| Approach | Round trips for six questions | Elapsed, nine-hour offset |
|---|---|---|
| Send each as it occurs | Six | Around two weeks |
| Daily batch | One or two | Two to three days |
| Weekly batch | One | One week, plus up to five days of holding |
| Mixed: urgent singly, rest batched | One, plus the urgent ones | Two to three days |
The last row is what most people actually want. It requires one decision per question, and the decision is easy: does anybody stop working today if this is not answered.
The form of the batch
Numbered, each question self-contained, each with a line saying why it matters or what it blocks.
- Is the 40 mm spacing confirmed? (We cut on Monday either way, so this one is the only urgent item.)
- Bolt grade for the upper flange — 8.8 or 10.9?
- Do you need the test certificates before dispatch or with it?
Numbering is not decoration. It lets the reply be "1 yes, 2 10.9, 3 with it", which is a message somebody can write in forty seconds from a phone, and a forty-second reply gets written today rather than tomorrow.
What batching does to the relationship
It is received well, which is not obvious in advance.
A counterparty receiving one organised list per day instead of six scattered messages experiences you as easier to deal with, and easier counterparties get answered first. This is not a small effect: in a supplier's mailbox containing forty customers, the one whose questions can be cleared in a single sitting moves up.
The exception worth protecting
Keep the ability to send something on its own and have it treated as urgent.
That only survives if it is rare. A counterparty who receives one genuinely urgent single message a month will act on it; one who receives four a week will treat them all as ordinary traffic, and the signal is gone precisely when it is needed.
Marking it explicitly helps: a subject line that says what is blocked and by when, and a body that contains one question and nothing else. Everything else goes on the list.
Keeping the list honest
Two failure modes, and both are visible early.
The list becomes a parking place. Questions go on it that should have been answered on this side, or that nobody actually needs the answer to, and the daily message grows until it is a chore to read. The discipline is that every item has somebody waiting on it; anything else is a note to self and belongs elsewhere.
Or the list becomes a substitute for thinking. Six questions sent together are easier to answer than six sent separately, and they are also easier to ask carelessly. A batch of badly formed questions produces a batch of partial answers and a second round trip, which is exactly what the batching was meant to avoid.
The useful check before sending is to read the list as the recipient and ask whether every item can be answered without coming back. The ones that cannot get rewritten before they go.