Team collaboration software covers a broad spectrum of products and uses. Web collaboration software allows broad teams to work together no matter where they are located.
Virtual organizations present new communication challenges to the project management team. Organizations can overcome those challenges with integrated collaboration software or by choosing best of breed collaboration components.
Web Collaboration and Wikis
Web collaboration tools run the gambit from simple, open source solutions to complex collaboration platforms. Components of these tools include wiki's, online calendars, email, chat, video conferencing and VOIP (Voice Over IP).
The wiki is a powerful, yet easy to use tool for team collaboration. A wiki allows members of a team to post useful information that the rest of the team can see as wiki pages. Team members can then append or modify information based on their role within the team.
Many wikis are extensible and can be used as lightweight document management systems. Users can search for wiki pages based on content. They are a great tool for sharing requirements, maintaining technical decisions, coordinating project materials and disseminating information.
Wikis do maintain a log of who made changes to which pages. Traditional wikis were intended to be open and allowed anyone with access to make changes throughout the wiki. Many wikis, in trying to appeal to business, have implemented more complex security models for managing roles.
A comparison of wiki software reveals the breadth of differences in the market. Some of the biggest names in this market are Drupal and Confluence. Both are platforms that can be used out of the box or highly customized to suit a businesses needs.
Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware is a free open source solution that includes a wiki, a calendar, forums, blogs, file and image galleries, wiki, bug and issue trackers, RSS feeds, tagging, advanced permission system for users and groups, and more.
Collaboration and Project Management Software
Project management software brings to mind pert charts and schedules. While these are important, with offshore teams, telecommuting and mobile teams project management is about keeping the team together. Basecamp is an example of collaborative project management software created by 37signals.
Basecamp allows teams to store information and comments from all members of a team in an organized manner. Users can subscribe to receive daily digest emails giving them a report of any activity or progress on a project. It supports true version control on everything, manages schedules, to do lists, time tracking and many other features.
Collaboration and Agile
Google offers free collaboration options via email, calendar and collaboration enabled word processors, spreadsheets and presentations. Teams can all view and make modifications to documents and see the changes real time. They can make the changes from anywhere in the world where there is an internet connection. This suite of tools can make far flung teams feel like their right in the same room.
Google's collaborative applications are a great inexpensive way to manage agile projects. Scrum teams can use the collaborative documents for managing business and technical information for sprints and the backlog can be managed collaboratively using the Google spreadsheet. Sprint burndown graphs can be created in Google spreadsheets and shared with the team real time.
Team collaboration software is a broad topic and it is expanding and improving all the time. Many organizations have overcome the challenges of keeping teams collaborative with integrated collaboration software or by choosing best of breed collaboration components.
Roger Vernon - Roger Vernon attended art & film school in Chicago before starting a career in software development. He has managed teams for a wide ...
