Collaborative project tools are
one indicator of the size of the collaborative market. David
Coleman in his collaboration newsletter reports almost 80
vendors providing collaborative project management tools.
Sharing the Plan…
To retell an old story, project information is kind of like
manure, spread it across the landscape and everything turns
green but pile it in a corner and it just smells bad.
Most projects are using one piled-in-a-corner copy of their
project plan and they print, post and copy their project
information diligently to all parties. Well probably not to
everyone, and probably not all that often, and certainly not all
of it… it's just too much paper. And if parts of the development
team are distributed, you can’t email the remote team a file
copy because it’s too risky to have uncontrolled copies lying
around. The result of all this? The value of project plan is
greatly diminished and project predictability suffers.
Capabilities needed…
Many of these collaborative tools are simple enough to allow
everyone to review and update their own information. Many of the
available collaborative tools provide 'enough' features, and
certainly give everyone project visibility. I believe that
collaborative access is worth more to a project team than many
advanced features.
Microsoft Project is a great tool and the defacto standard. Most
teams only use a fraction of the total capability because that
is all that is needed to meet the needs of their project. Too
many project leaders have wandered into advanced features only
to revert to a backup copy after a few frustrating hours of not
getting the expected results. Microsoft Project with SharePoint
services steps in the collaborative direction, but is still more
tool than most projects need.
Getting Started…
I recommend starting with an ASP version (Application Solution
Provider - a version hosted by the vendor and used over the
internet) of the product before you invest to host it on your
servers. This is a great way to perform an in-depth evaluation.
In general I am less concerned about the money to bring the
software in house (although some are pricey) than I am about the
investment in people to install, support, service, and learn to
use the application. Most self-host versus ASP tradeoff
decisions underestimate the cost of internal resources required
to startup and learn an application. Once an application has
proven itself with a pilot project or two, then consider a
purchase.
If you are not familiar with collaborative project management
products, I would suggest you take a look at onProject via the
link below. I have no affiliation with this company and provide
no endorsement; they were selected since they will give you a
good taste for products in this segment and they let you into
their demo without collecting personal information.
[onProject demo]
Cautions…
A concern with any new tool is access to adequate and immediate
support from the vendor. Project planning tools are mission
critical; if you are stuck, you need help immediately. One
reason I like Primavera is that more than once I had a live
problem-solver on the phone almost immediately. Quality of
vendor support changes all the time; so before you commit to any
project planning solution, test the vendors support.
A second risk with new collaborative vendors is stability. You
should select a collaborative vendor that can export the project
to the industry standard MPX file format.
My final caution is that this newsletter is targeted at product
development teams of 8 to 40. If you have larger teams, you may
want more advanced features including: resource-allocation,
progress reporting, nested planning, statistical analysis, and
schedule modeling. |
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