Collaboration, Communication, and Coordination for Start Teams

(I’m a big fan of How to Posts but not a big fan of writing them but these concepts happened to collide this week.)

No team can survive without the following:  Communication, Collaboration, and Coordination.  If everyone can’t say what they’re doing and provide input into the project, its bound to fail.  Simple enough, right?  Using an online collaboration package can save your bacon.

Here’s a few questions you can ask to determine if the team needs collaborative software:

Does your project team have more than three people or do they work in different locations?

Do you think a calendar would help the team hit due dates?

Do you need online meetings or screen sharing?

Does more than one person provide input into a presentation or document?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need collaborative software.  In 1993, I used Lotus Notes and became a a Notes developer and collaborative tool evangelist.  I’ll admit I’m biased.  Since then, there have probably been more than 100 products that have collaborative functions.  Literally every major software vendor sells one they’ve built or acquired or they sell someone else’s (HP.)  I can’t remember many projects where I didn’t use one of these the first week the project started.

If you don’t already have their favorite, Check out Wiggio (a Boston startup with over 200,000 users) and Microsoft Office Live (probably with over a million users.) 

Wiggio and Office both offer conferencing features; however, I’ve got to say my preference now is Wiggio (it leverages Zoho for files and several white labeled products).  Why?  There’s only a tiny install footprint – and that’s only to support screen sharing. 

Office Live integrates extremely well into your existing Office installation so you can save files while you’re working on them directly into your Office Live workspace.  For conferencing and chat, it leverages Messenger.  Personally, I think it is a bit light on discussion features.

I’m also trying out Google Wave on one project that hasn’t quite gotten off the ground yet and I have to admit, I like Wave a great deal.  Being able to spawn a new discussion thread on a single sentence or word has incredible value:  you are able to gain granular clarity very quickly.  I’m hoping they release soon so that others can try it.

Adopting a collaborative tool inevitably leads to inducing the team to use it, finding better ways to use it such as developing naming conventions and directory structures, and a whole host of other things, all of which are typical organizational things that everyone has to resolve. 

To get the most out of them, adopt early, force communication patterns that reinforce the tool’s use, and ensure that you keep the flow of information going.  (Hope this helps!)