[bbarthel]

Please don't mistake my comment as an argument for using email in all situations. I think that source control is widely accepted and about as frictionless as it should be. There are a variety of task-management tools and processes that can be used pretty easily within a team and also generally hit about the right level of friction. I love being able to integrate the two and further reduce needless friction. It is all the different discussions and conversations that go on around those items that are difficult because I don't want any friction in those discussions. I should be able to see what my client thinks of the new GUI, or ask an old roommate of mine to review some performance-critical code and see how he would approach it without requiring them to create a new account, get access from IT, purchase a license, or any of the other impediments usually placed on using these sorts of tools.

Basically, my thought is that if you are attempting to compete with/replace email, you need to address the friction issue for those items. Otherwise people will eventually revert to email at which point updating the repository becomes another item in the todo-list, and the reality I've experienced is that it will ALWAYS be the bottom item.

In short, I agree with all the problems you cite, I simply have not been able to experience the ideal because none of the systems I have attempted to use reduce the barriers to communication sufficiently to replace email.