Category: Technology

Now that most of us have been asked / forced to work from home, collaboration tools are getting a lot of use and hopefully your organization was ahead of the move and not scrambling to deploy and adopt during a crisis.

Over the years that I’ve spent in consulting, I’ve been exposed to numerous tools, some good, some bad, but they all seemed to meet the immediate need at the moment. I witnessed the progression from messaging to full fledge collaboration (sharing, editing of files live) and with each iteration there were always hurdles and learning curves that needed to be overcome. Messaging always seemed to be fairly straightforward…type a comment or response, click send and repeat.

Then came the Calendar and Scheduling functions…a bit trickier as you need to filter between public and private entries, have access to others calendars and even the more complex ability to schedule conference rooms. However, if this capability is functioning as expected it becomes very efficient in scheduling meetings / calls and ensuring that participants are available and not double-booked. I found folks that would “block” certain hours out during the day so they weren’t swamped with back-to-back meetings, or requested for attendance during their lunch hour. This practice is highly effective when working in a global culture and when individuals forget about timezones.

Then came the more exotic and truly collaborative functionality of live / in-line editing of files (documents, spreadsheets, project plans…etc.). This often requires a lot of education and more important governance around who, what and when documents should be manipulated. There have been too many times when someone forgets they are actively updating, or worse, deleting a document. When you are working as a team on a file, you have to remember that someone else can be in that file at the same time. I’ve found that the old SharePoint method of checking-out and checking-in documents was a bit safer. However, new tools will show you when a person is in the document and what they may be updating at the moment. This often works well when your network, WiFi and connectivity are top-notch.

Here are some Pros and Cons of collaboration tools: (per my colleagues)

• Pro:
• Higher productivity in a team environment
• Accountability across the team versus individual
• Greater visibility within the team to workload and availability
• Intuitive collaboration – Sharing of ideas with immediate feedback
• Standardization of applications
• Fairly easy deployment of tool(s)

• Con:
• Managing individual calendar more difficult (being invited to everything)
• Collaboration governance not adhered to – Too much access is granted to files (files deleted, modified or moved)
• Tool adoption is more complicated when someone has used another tool they are more comfortable with – Bring Your own Tool (BYOT)
• Fear of Big Brother – Opening my calendar, or current status allows management to see what I’m doing every minute of the day

Finally, while there are numerous offerings out there with a lot of options for small to large corporations and even families or groups, you should spend some time defining your problem statement – what is it that you want to address and make more efficient. Perhaps starting small and then rolling-in more complexity will make your team adopt the tool more effectively. Either way, this is the ideal time to do your research and see how a collaboration application can help keep your team’s communication optimal.

In future posts I will explore the content management systems (on-premise / cloud), repositories and digital asset management systems that have linkage to the products listed above that I’ve been exposed to.