usecase Archives - Communote

03Jun3. Juni 2009

How does Microblogging affect Project Communication?

Microblogging is a rather new and unique form of communication. There are a number of discussions on the effects of this technique. Justin Franks refers to Harvard professor Hansen and argues that the "search barrier" in organisations is pulled down, while Stefan Hauptmann explains the phenomenon with the sociological concept of "unlikely communication". In this article we are going to enrich this discussion in sharing our experiences with changes in project communication due to microblogging usage. (mehr …)

By Dirk RöhrbornAnwendungsfälle, Blogcommunication, project communications, project management, teamwork, usecase13 Comments

Communote for Project Management (2): How to use

Our last posting covered basic advantages and use cases of microsharing for project management. Today we are going to dig deeper and show how multiple project management tasks are supported by Communote.

Assign Tasks

As with Twitter you can use the shortcode @<username> in Communote, too. Use this code to explicitly address a posting to a user. Every user can choose how Communote should react on a @-mention: there is an email notification and the fast possibility of instant messaging (Jabber/XMPP). The big advantage of this form of task assignment is transperency. Not only the project management and @tom know the task but the whole team. Through this, everybody knows who to ask for task-related questions. Further, team members can share their knowledge (i.e. to Mr Miller or customer ABC).

Build a Project Documentation

It is very fast and easy to post short summaries of meetings and conversations. In doing so, team members inform stakeholders who were not present in the meeting. Furthermore, Communote helps when you need to research for old facts. It has become your seamless project memory.

Discussion

Projects with complex tasks need discussions between the team members to find the right way to achieve the goals. It can be hard to organise such discussion meetings if the team works distributed or is very big. In a meeting, you also have social problems like group think or fear. Communote is a perfect platform for an open discussion among team members. As it enables asynchronous discussions you can also revive older discussions and thoughts.

Knowledge Identification

Communote will be your central platform for communication and knowledge. With asking "Who has experiences with ITIL?" you do not have to flood everybody's email boxes. This team member who could give a positive answer will notice the keyword "ITIL" and post an answer. The others do not get bothered.

Management of Documents

You can use attachments with every Communote posting. Therefore the tool is also a fast and easy platform for a light-weight project document management.

Multi Project Management

Communote is a multi-microblogging platform. You can start as much microblogs as you want and add users to the single microblogs. Using this you can unite different projects on a single platform. The project manager sees all postings from all of her projects in an integrated view. You will love it!

By Dirk RöhrbornAnwendungsfälle, Blogmicroblogging, project communications, project management, teamwork, usecase2 Comments

Communote for Project Management

Projects teams usually have to handle a large amount of information. Also, the team members often work in different locations and sometimes do not know each other very well. That is why it can be hard to build a common understanding of the tasks or to achieve team spirit. This is where microblogging steps in. In writing and reading many small and informal information snippets your team members have an "I-am-near-by" experience and will be aware of what theire colleagues are doing. We collected a number of other arguments for the use of Communote as project management tool in the following table:

Transparency	In using microblogging the whole project and its processes become transparent for the team, the manager and other stakeholders. You have access to the informal communication of team members and therefore it is possible to anticipate chances/risks or good/bad developments much earlier.
Speed	Because of the transparency every team member is aware of problems or change requests and can therefore act fast and early.
Self-organisation	Communote supports self-organisation in project teams. Because every important information is available via the microblogging platform, all team members or sub-projects can plan their activities on an up-to-date information base. This frees the project manager from many of the coordination tasks.
Mobility	Communote comes with a mobile client. Using this you can send postings via mobile phone or PDA. This integrates travelling team members in the project’s information flow.
Documentation	If you use Communote for your project communication you seamlessly write a project history (like a project diary). And: you do not only document facts but also the underlying decision processes.
Networking	Microblogging supports networking. Open your project microblog to the whole company and you will discover valuable hints from colleagues addressing your problems or risks.

At Communardo the microblog has become a most important means of communication for many projects. In one of the following blog posts we will explain how to use Communote in projects and how this changes the team communications within projects.

By Dirk RöhrbornAnwendungsfälle, Blogmicroblogging, project management, usecase2 Comments

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