How to reply to an E-mail from your boss (as a Software Developer)

So, you have received an email from your boss or any higher-ups asking you to immediately to check for some urgent issue pertaining to your application/project?

There are two things here to keep in mind. As a Software Developer, you should know how to reply to such e-mails :

1. If the matter is straight forward and you know exactly what to reply and
2. If the matter is NOT straight forward and you DO NOT know what to reply but you want to buy some time to investigate the issue.

If your situation is #1, then, you just provide the relevant details, getting straight to the point, provide the facts to support your analysis, if any.

It is important to note that this emails should not be bloated with un-necessary details as people do not have the time to read all the stuff. Trust me, nobody cares about what phrases, jargons and esoteric words you use.
Replying with boring and un-necessary details might even hurt your reputation. So, please be mindful when replying to any e-mail.

But if your situation is #2, you do not know what, when, how it happened, but you do not want to look stupid but want to provide some details to cool down the your boss then here’s what you do:

1. Gather relevant facts — this means the data points which support the argument. You do not have to get the concrete facts. Provide what you are suspecting could be the issue.
2. DO NOT state anything in certainty if you are NOT confident with.
3. Admit that you will be still looking into the matter and you would be keeping everyone is mail chain posted on any updates.
4. DO NOT blame others teams/team-members if you are NOT certain with the facts.
5. MOST IMPORTANT: Provide some data so that others could work with. For example, provide logs, charts, code snippets etc. based on the topic.

Let’s understand this with a simple example:

Mail from boss: “Urgent: Needs investigation on your application crash”

Your reply should look something like this:
“Hi boss,
….. based on the logs, it looks like this crash is due to memory leak from the application. This application is used for lot of heavy computation…..
Here from the graph, it looks it is mostly due to API /foo/bar at 13:22. This call is made by X, Y, Z services and around 10,000 calls from each service. That being said, I will keep you posted regarding the updates.”

See how I supported my argument with the data with number of calls, API calls, timing etc. This gives people something to work with.

What you should NOT do:
“This service is called by X, Y and Z. So they must limit the calls… Rahul from our team deployed new change which is causing this issue..”

That’s it. Just keep it simple and do not play blame games.