Eventually you realise that email just doesn’t cut it when it comes to collaborating, especially when working with a team of people even for a short period of time on only a small number of documents.  What you really need is a team collaboration space.

A team collaboration tool should offer some or all of the following :-

• Web based project space for each project
• Ability to invite people to join the project space (this could be both colleagues and external clients/partners)
• Sharing of documents – should offer transparent version control, check-in/check-out
• Wiki pages to share information (ie meeting notes, reference information, project objectives, status reports etc)
• Forums/blogs for sharing information within the team
• Calendar capability to specify events related to the team
• Ticketing system for assigning ownership and tracking of tasks/actions
• Full text search across all content or particular types of content
• Integration to instant messaging tools to have team chat conversations recorded in project space
• If used for technical projects could also include integrated source code control and build automation tools
• Integration to other services such as Yammer (think closed Twitter for internal company use).  Yammer group updates could be shown in project space

Alot of these tools exist and such shared project spaces is really about assembling these tools together and enabling rapid configuration of new spaces as needed.

Providing these kind of tools can make a big impact on productivity.  It reduces problems related to what is the latest version of a document, or islands of information locked in people’s local machines or inboxes.  This issue becomes most apparent when someone new joins a project and you then have to try and forward all related emails or documents, with a project space everything would be available in one single place with a full history of progress.

Some solutions in this space are as follows :-

• Basecamp - SaaS service with subscription model, free version available with some limits which is worth trying to seeing if offers what you need
• OForge – open source assembled solution includes wiki, ticketing, svn, build tool integration
• Alfresco Share – open source solution with strong document management core, search, blogs/forums, wiki’s, calendar

Additional useful tools include web conferencing with desktop share/whiteboards/chat/video such as Adobe ConnectNow (free for up to 3 people) and DimDim (free for up to 20 people).

Adopting tools such as this can sometimes be the hardest part – the only way is to trial it for one project and gain familiarity with some key features such as document management and wiki’s and then use it more and more as confidence and experience grows.  Experience shows that once people get used to the benefits they get from having all the information they need in one place they never want to return to the days of chasing others for documents and meeting notes.

Tagged: Basecamp, Optaros, Project Management, team collaboration, Yammer