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successful projects can grow more quickly. The answer does appear to be “yes,” and many project managers are already making good use of these tools to run projects in a very much more open, collaborative, and participative manner. Improved communications? You bet.
Collaborative Documents
Project communication and organizational memory are also embodied in the documents that a project produces. Today we have available vast improvements in the technology of generating collaborative documents. Collaborative document technologies can and should be applied to projects. These include:
- Wiki’s are internet/intranet resident documents that are “owned in common.” As such, they can be deployed and owned in common by a project group. All the plans, notes, revisions, discoveries, reports, questions, and documentation can be established as pages in a shared wiki. Everyone who has permission can edit the wiki. Editorial management can be maintained and changes overseen by management, after everyone contributes as they go. Wiki products are either open source or inexpensive. These provide a record of design and management of the project.
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When the networks are allowed to extend beyond corporate intranets, management can also evaluate the industry reputation of their star performers. Of course, it becomes easier to see where the problem performers are, too…. |
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- management where attention is needed. But mostly blogs provides a sense of empowerment and engagement, improving how team members feel about the project outcome. Individuals gain reputations outside their team as their knowledge merits, and have larger impacts throughout the whole organization/corporation, thereby increasing efficiency.
- Formal collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Groove, originated by Ray Ozzie. This converts the standard Microsoft desktop documents (word, excel, PowerPoint) into shared group documents.
Enhanced Personal Communications
It is now possible for everyone to stay connected to anytime, and anywhere (whether this is good or not is perhaps a
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- Blogs, a.k.a. web logs or “we blog,” are personal journals that anyone can access. These become personal records and personal answers to FAQs. They provide for lateral, indirect communication. They share knowledge and findings throughout the organization, particularly when coupled with the advanced search technology which can now be licensed for corporate use. They are “how the good and bad lessons” are spread informally. They allow steam to be blown off, and they pinpoint to
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matter of personal preference…). For project collaboration however, there is no doubt that tools such as Instant Messaging, global roaming, VoIP, and now Universal Messaging are essential for personal and business communications. Generally, these are one-to-one communication technologies, but each can be used in conference mode allowing many people to contribute to the stream of discussion. From a project point of view, record keeping is enhanced too: everything can be recorded, a huge article
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