Collecting everyone’s available times is a loosely-coupled task. Once issuing the call for available times, those participants can work independently to determine his or her own open times on his or her own schedule. This information is usually represented as a list of days and times.
The next task, to find a suitable meeting time, is another loosely-coupled task. With everyone’s list of days and times, another person can transform this representation into another list of days and times, one that fits with the most people.
The final task, reminding those participating in the meeting of when and where to be, is another loosely-coupled task. A day or so before the meeting, a reminder email needs to be sent.
These tasks on their own are all loosely-coupled. Why, then, is the whole process tightly coupled? Each task must execute in sequence, that is, everyone’s times must be collected before a suitable time can be chosen, and this time must be chosen before sending reminders out. Because of this, there is back-and-forth interaction between the meeting planner and the attendees.
Overall, the task is relatively tightly-coupled. Most aspects are loosely-coupled, but the overall task does require a greater degree of back-and-forth interaction.
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I can see your argument for a tight-coupled categorization, but it seems like your initial assessment of loosely-coupled may be more accurate. There is a certain amount of coordination that must go into it (as you put it, the sequence of steps), but the amount of actual interaction seems pretty minimal. Every step happens with members working on their own, though everyone can fill in their 'free times' simultaneously. I would say that the group during the events of the actual meeting, after all the scheduling is done, might constitute as a more tightly-coupled system. If you consider this still as a tightly-coupled system, I think further argument might be interesting.
ReplyDeleteTo continue with the loosely vs tightly coupled discussion. Even if the quantity of interaction seems like a lot when trying to set up a meeting time, but if you met face to face to set it up it might only take a few minutes. I would consider the time lag and non co-located aspects of these representations as more important and consider it a loosely coupled system overall.
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