SharedPlan Connect, July 19, 2006
"It may be hard for an egg to turn into
a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining
an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being
just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”
~ C. S. Lewis
Hello Everyone,
Last week, I sent an invitation to several of our current
newsletter readers inviting them to try new SharedPlan OpenPlanning™, a free
application suite for project planning, collaboration, and community. Many accepted our invitation (and helped us work a few kinks
out), and we’re now ready to invite the rest of our readers to join, as
well.
(For those of you who received the prior invitation, skip the next section.)
What Is This All About?
Over the last few newsletters, I have discussed aspects of
communication, collaboration, and community, particularly within the context of
projects. I promised in the last
edition to describe what we’ll do with SharedPlan’s products and services to
enable and promote project communication, collaboration, and community. We have been working very hard to develop a
set of tools that enable a new approach to planning and executing
projects.
We are now ready to share the first of these tools with
you. Today we’re announcing the public
release of SharedPlan
OpenPlanning™, a free application suite for project communities.
First, What Is OpenPlanning?
OpenPlanning is an entirely new concept in the planning and
execution of projects. With
OpenPlanning, you can plan smarter by:
- Finding
example plans on which to base your new project.
- Sharing
your project expertise with your peers.
- Receiving
critical feedback on your project.
What Is Included In OpenPlanning?
- An
easy-to-use, elegant project management application (formerly SharedPlan
Personal Edition),
- An
online, searchable public repository for plans (www.sharedplan.net/), and
- A
searchable discussion forum linked to the stored plans (www.sharedplan.org/).
And Why Are We Giving It Away For
Free?
As we have said many times, we believe the value of planning
is in the process, not in the plan itself.
In fact, we believe:
- There
are very few truly new planning scenarios.
- Communication
and collaboration amongst the team is more important than plan detail.
- People
learn and grow more by sharing their knowledge than from receiving
knowledge from others.
- Projects
are performed by project communities.
- Capturing
the collective wisdom of the community will lead to better plans and
successful projects.
SharedPlan Tip of the Month
So, what’s the best way to go about using OpenPlanning? Well, there are various scenarios. Very simply,
you can use the planning
application as a basic scheduling tool to plan your activities. However, there are many more interesting
usage scenarios.
If you’re starting a new type of project and would like to
find plans for similar types of projects, go to the OpenPlanning repository and search for
one. If you find an interesting one,
you can view the summary
page to see a description and task list.
If you would like to see the plan itself, open the OpenPlanning
application, select File/Open by Project ID, and enter the Project ID from the
summary page. And, if you really
like it, you can tag it using del.icio.us, digg, or
similar tools so other people with
similar interests can find it easily.
If you don’t see one there that meets your needs, post a
request for one to the OpenPlanning user community forum under Project
Discussions.
SharedPlan Plan of the Month
OpenPlanning member Robert posted a plan for developing an exhibit
gallery that he had used once in a client proposal. The plan provides remarkable detail,
although I suspect many of those tasks involve similar levels of detail
themselves. Thanks for posting, Robert.
Your ordinary, decent egg,
Tracy
