Case Story: Team Communications

Summary	How to address the use of multiple online spaces for team communications
Group / workshop	Planet team	Status	seed
Project details...

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

A team of people are working on the same project but are geographically dispersed across the country. Some face to face contact but largely working semi autonomously.

Task

What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

The team need to share information, review documents, store reports, minutes and publications, discuss issues arising from the project and generally keep abreast of each others' progress and availability. Seeking to keep everyone informed within suitable access and transparency constraints.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

In the first instance the team agreed to use a mix of tools as follows:

• email for general communications
• a blog for public facing information
• googlegroups
• googledocs for shared documents
• googlecode for specifications and tracking technical debvelopment
• the team created a project website that mapped onto the URL for the blog
• a shared calendar based on google calendar
• Bibsonomy and deli.ci.ous for references

RSS feeds from various blogs to individual email accounts

As the project unfolded further communications elements were added such as google sites; ultimately the project then added a wiki site to host the project playform and this in itself duplicated several vehicles already in use e.g. blog, calendar etc.

Results

What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?

There was confusion over where to place information, which information should be editable, where to look for information. (support work flow). Issue regarding version tracking, updates, document status.

One example of the confusion might be seen in the fact that there were several contacts lists scattered across the various communication elements. Google docs, Xwiki site, Google sites wiki. (repetition of information / lack of knowledge of what exists)

A further issue was who was to control and administer these various elements. Project administration versus project content brings up role clarification issues.

Further issues concern the ability of the evaluation team to be sure that all relevant information, discussions and data were stored across the various elements. Following confusion over where to place some information some team members didn’t put information anywhere. Issue over tool literacy, working practice, preferred tools.

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

• Keep things as simple as possible. – chose a minimal tool set to support communications. Toolsets should evolve and grow rather than reduce.
• Ensure that the communications elements at least mapped on to peoples' work flows
• Seek a one stop shop where possible

- a wiki might have met most requirements from the start.

• Eliminate links that take the user into another application
  – embed rather than external sites with new login, new browser, bouncing around applications is problematic etc. Minimise functionality overlap of tools

Licensing

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