"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." 

– Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

If you read any of the marketing mumbo-jumbo that we have published, you know that we believe that if you improve project team collaboration, then you’re very likely to improve project success.  But what does that really mean?  Isn’t a project team inherently collaborative?  They are a team, aren’t they?

 

Well, for one thing, traditional project team structure does not actually promote collaboration, and could actually interfere with it.  This structure typically has a dedicated project manager that oversees (monitors?  babysits?  herds?) the various project contributors, including individuals and groups.  Contributors report progress and problems ‘up’ to the project manager, and the project manager pushes tasks and requirements ‘down’ to the team.  But what about communication of progress or problems between the team members?  And does communication of status through the project manager enhance or interfere with collaboration?  What if the project manager is not an expert on the particular issues to be communicated?

 

What if there was no project manager?  What if there were just the team members, in the ultimate flat organization.  It could eliminate any indirect communication paths and maybe enhance collaboration, but could also lead to chaos, right?

 

Obviously, I’m asking a lot of questions and not providing much in the way of answers here.  At the end of the day, there will still be hierarchical project management structures with their inherent strengths and limitations, and here at SharedPlan we’re trying to eliminate those limitations.  That’s why we have built an application that can be deployed on all team members’ desktops (whether they’re Mac, Windows, or Linux) and have designed the application to be as simple as possible to operate.  Everybody has it and everyone can use it.  Then we built the features in to enable those desktop applications to easily share project plans and status among all team members.  Shared plans, shared problems, shared success – SharedPlan.  Get it?

 

 

The next (but not last) step in our quest is to provide a network-based repository for all project plans.  Why?  Enhancing collaboration, of course.  If all team members always have access to the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it, then it breaks down one more barrier to collaboration.

 

We’re going to call this repository SharedPlan Central, and it will be free to all licensees of SharedPlan Professional.  A free, private, network-accessible space for project teams to store project plans. This is the first and only free project repository on the planet…is that great, or what?!  And, this is only the beginning of our collaborative services, so stay tuned.

 

A couple of months ago I asked for volunteers to participate in our Central beta program.  Well, we got a little sidetracked in the interim working on enhancements to SharedPlan Pro.  (Download the latest copy, version 2.1.0, here.)  But we’re getting there and expect beta to begin in late November or early December.  So, again, anyone interested in using Central beta please raise your hand.  Then, send me an email at centralbeta@sharedplan.com, since I can’t see your hand.

A number of you have asked for information regarding the content of our updates. Well, as usual, we listened and you can now find information on each update on our product update page (and, of course, an RSS feed is available). We’ve also just enhanced the Mac OS X install process so that it is simpler and quicker and more Mac-like.

 

These changes were the direct result of your feedback so let us know what you’d like to see in our products. We’ve added a page where you can (anonymously) submit grumbles, gripes, kudos, feedback, and enhancement requests…let us know what you think! Just don’t dis' the dog.  (Yes, there’s a pup wandering around the SharedPlan office these days.  Having a dog on site is required to receive your Boulder business license.)

Since this newsletter seems to have a lot of marketing stuff, I thought I’d point you to something completely different.  How about a few unique games?

 

 

As always, thanks for reading.