Team Communication Today

Today most projects are done with small teams, created of several users who have the best skills for the job. When the job is done the group is cleared and every group member returns back to his department. Modern groupware software can help you to manage your temporary team.

Everone within the newly created team has his special role. There are one or more project managers, designers, marketing guys etc. Threfore you need to be able to set individual permissions. A project manager needs to be able to take a look on everyone’s scheduler – a designer not. This can result in a very tricky permission management – who should be allowed to do what and where? A good groupware software should allow you to set up groups where you can set group permissions. This makes the whole permission managment much easier.

Communication is everything, so you should not create barriers by telling your team members not to call you, because it’s too expensive. When you need to take care about telephony costs, think about using the internet telephone system Skype. When everyone of your team has Skype installed, phoning becomes a charm.

A chat system can help you to cut costs too. Mostly we do a call only to get a small amount of information. It’s better to use a chat system – and even faster! When you new groupware system has a build in chat system everything is ready at startup and you don’t have to worry about the different chat protocols and messengers which are availble on the internet.

Emails complete your communication system. Emails are still the most used communication type in today’s business and emails are good when you’re not available via chat or Skype. Imagine you’re in a meeting and your Skype phone rings – ehhh not good. It’s better to get out of the meeting and check for new emails. When everything is available within your new groupware software you can answer via email, or when your team partner is online, send a Skype call or a chat message.

Alexander Bartz is senior project manager at soft-evolution, a europe based software company and innovative provider of Pimero, a team capable personal information manager.