For a little over a year now we've been using IM within our team at work. It's been really handy for those times you would like an answer *now*, and don't want to have to wait for an email reply or hope they get a voice mail, e.g. "Wanna go to lunch?" or "Did you check that file into CVS?". It's also good for the boss, who gets so many emails that it could be *days* before she sees yours
It works well for mini-meetings and mutual debugging sessions, too (not quite pair-programming, but close).
Of course, every now and then we get bored and type random smartass crap to each other such as:
--Nat
Re:IM at work
kjones4 on 2002-12-06T08:35:50
We split our NOC into two locations recently. We now have a constant Polycom video seession plus IRC to keep us connected. I'm surprised at how much it feels like being next to each other. Not bad at all.
