Saturday, July 23, 2005

Collaborative Project Management

I propose that our next conference call include online project management, using two initially-free tools. My business group has recently switched to using GoToMeeting for online presentations. I have been using Project KickStart since the old DOS days. It's a great tool for creating an initial draft of a project. During the conference call, we would all log in to GoToMeeting and I wouldn't data into Project KickStart on my PC for all of us to see at once. That way we can brainstorm together and record our ideas. There is a chat window for sending messages, too, so people could type in their ideas and thoughts there, and I could then move them to Project KickStart. The results can be exported to other software.

Brainstorming sessions like this often benefit from a few rules. Here are the 4 rules I learned at the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Club: Anything goes, OK to add on to others' ideas, Keep it short (10 words or less, probably), No "Yes but"s. This process can generate a lot of useful information. Subsequent steps clean up the list, estimate timelines, assign tasks, etc.

Please comment.

1 comment:

  1. Bego-

    I just checked out the GoToMeeting website, and it looks very promising. For $49 per month, we should really make lots of use of it... Can we use webcams and or webmicrophones, or do we go through the conference call too?

    The www.ExperienceInSoftware.com website didn't come up. Can we view what you put in there through the GoToMeeting online presentation? Could you change the URLs into links on the blog, please?

    The rules sound like good ground rules for efficient meetings. I guess my "yes, but..." will have to be stated differently, like "maybe... How about this?" (Just kidding). I like our casual but efficient format for conference calls so far, but I can imagine as more and more people want to participate, it could get confusing.

    What did you have in mind for the seedwiki? Can this be helpful in our generation of ideas, tasks, etc? I think this would be a good way to communicate and exchange ideas without the necessity of a conference call...

    Let me know.

    ELMO

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