SharedPlan Connect

SharedPlan Connect, January 17, 2006

“Many people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits.”

~Author Unknown

Welcome to the New Year! I just got back from my spin class with all of my fellow New Year’s resolution-makers (resolutionaries?). I’m hoping I am at least able to outlast them – I give them until mid-February before they go back to their couch-potato ways. Not me, though. Nope, I’m a changed man!

Wow, What a Response!

We got a tremendous response to the house plan in my December newsletter. My favorite came from Ralph from Down Under:

“Jeeezus – what the hell was that!!!”

Seriously, though, hundreds of people checked out that project plan! That tells me that people really are interested in what others are doing in project management.

We recently delivered a copy of SharedPlan to some folks in Kabul, Afghanistan who are working on rebuilding that country. I would love to see the project plan for what they’re doing!

We here at SharedPlan view the sharing of plans as just a different form of collaboration. One generally thinks of (and I have written in this space about) project collaboration as improved communication between project team members. But there are lots of aspects of project management that could benefit from improved collaboration.

For instance, I regularly monitor various project management online forums, and I often see this type of question posted:

“I have been asked to manage a new [insert project type here] project. Although I’m an experienced project manager, I have never managed this type of project. Does anyone out there have any experience with this type of project? What issues should I watch out for?”

Invariably, the response is a couple of sentences from someone with such experience, identifying an area of risk or concern. Wouldn’t a much richer discussion be enabled if the respondent actually provided his actual past project plan*? Then the questioner can see the entire project flow, start overlaying her own resources on the plan, and quickly identify her own project risk areas. How much more valuable is that brief exchange?

Isn’t That What Collaboration is All About?

Webster’s dictionary defines collaborate as “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.” Although the word communication does not appear anywhere in this definition, the majority of collaborative tools (including ours) focus on improving communication to enhance collaboration. Why is this?

I believe it is because communication is the largest barrier to joint work of any type. More importantly, I believe people yearn for better ways to communicate, ways that lower sociological, psychological, cultural, or other types of communication barriers. How else can you explain the popularity of blogs, for instance? Or instant messaging? Wikis? Text messaging?

We’re an inherently social species with contradictory or conflicting communication needs. In so many ways, we need to erect communication barriers to protect ourselves, yet we also yearn to have a voice. This is the context in which the project manager must work with his team. Recognizing this challenge, SharedPlan is trying to provide team members with a voice while helping the project manager to organize those voices into a chorus.

(However, unfettered communication can lead to problems, and collaboration leadership may be needed. Look at Debra Schiff’s blog entry on wikipedia’s recent problems and establishing a collaboration leader. Her description of a collaboration leader could just as easily describe a project manager.)

Follow-Up to August’s “Oddity”

In the August 2005 newsletter, I described an odd little startup business called The Business Experiment (TBE). To refresh your memory, TBE was using the Wisdom of Crowds to make all of the strategic and tactical decisions in the establishment of a new business, including defining the nature of the business itself. I joined so that I could observe their progress (hey, it’s just another take on collaboration, right?). Well, after lots of initial spirited debate, they (we) decided on a business to pursue. Then, when it came time to actually do the work, like developing the business plan or creating a marketing strategy, everyone suddenly got very quiet (including yours truly). The whole thing is described well in this article in Fast Company.

SharedPlan Tip of the Month

For those of you using SharedPlan on a Mac you've probably heard that Apple has released new computers using Intel processors. If you're thinking about upgrading to one of the new machines, rest assured that your investment in SharedPlan is protected. Our currently shipping products are compatible with the new computers. If you have the current version of our software, just select SharedPlan (or SharedPlan Pro) in Finder, choose File->Get Info and note that the "Kind" is a Universal application (as in this screenshot).

Just my $0.02 …

Tracy

* Suitably anonymized, of course.