The ability to disseminate up-to-date information to interested parties is essential for the success of a project. Armed with the most current information, Project Managers can stay on top of their project tasks and communicate with their teams.
Knowledge collaboration is at the center of the EasyTaskLink System. Effective communication is a key component to running an effective and profitable project. Within the Professional Edition of EasyTaskLink collaboration is done using an Email communication method. Tasks are sent out via Outlook and status reports are filed back to the Project Manager via Outlook tasks. Notifications are also sent out by email to keep stakeholders informed of issues. Workgroup and Enterprise Editions provide the team members full access to the project details in the LAN and Web Client Modes allowing for comprehensive collaboration.
In addition to the communication and collaboration of information internal to the company and the project team, it is also important to disseminate information outside the project team, often including customers, in a secure fashion. The customer perception of the “success” of the project is based not only on the finished product but also on the satisfactory resolution of problems and how much time was required to communicate the issues and to find a resolution.
Several specific ways for Project Managers to communicate effectively have been identified as best practices and are easily repeatable (an essential element of ISO 9000 certification). These include:
v Have a central repository of contents of the most current information accessible at all times.
v Avoid duplicate transmission and reply from multiple members within the project group.
v Provide all facilities to support collaboration such as task oriented comment boards and offline discussions.
v Create regular status reports in a format that is easy to distribute and read (email, for example), management can peruse and extract open items to address in a timely manner.
v Actions are logged and hence traceable to the originator of the information.
v Support subscriber model so information is both pulled and pushed.