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Manor

I read an interesting comment by someone last night about how project management tools should mirror current reality. This is absolutely true. What is happening currently? Who is doing what? Did the client like the new banner that we showed them? No? Why not? Capturing inter and intra-workplace conversations can eventually become your project health yardstick.
Would you want to know how your Gantt charts and plans look that you created 2 weeks back or would you want to know what is happening within your project today and how its going to impact tomorrow?

“Collaboration at the heart of project management” - PM 2.0 Definition: Wikipedia

Projects are no longer created, managed, tracked and controlled by project managers. Thats the thing of the past. Today, everyday work that has a business outcome is treated like a ‘project’. e.g. launching your website, releasing a new version of a software, gathering input from your clients etc. Business people (even business owners) that have a stake in the project are the new ‘project managers’. The control has shifted from top-down to bottom-up. At the heart of this shift is the need to collaborate effectively, easily and quickly. 

Going back in time, project management 1.0 was all about planning, getting schedules right and setting up the project with nice looking charts and graphs. Today, with dispersed teams, always-online gadgets and sophisticated online technology, Project Management 2.0 is about people, conversations, relationships, sharing, execution and collaboration. Less planning and getting more work done.

Project management 2.0 gives you complete visiblity to whats going on within your projects. Real-time changes and updates to your projects can be easily tracked online. This helps your team to take action early or change course quickly if things are not going right. 

At DeskAway, we are striving to create an online service that is not only simple and powerful to use but also facilitates social collaboration. DeskAway already includes comment threads, RSS and instant email notifications. In the coming months we plan to integrate user profiles, twitter-like social message updates, email integration so that your conversation via email can be logged easily into DeskAway. 

At the end of the day software should be fun and easy to use. Just like your social network, right?

Imagine you are on a holiday, a much needed getaway from work and suddenly at 11 in the night you get a call from your manager, who is in the other part of the globe. He wants you to upload a business critical file, onto the company intranet for an important client presentation due in the next one hour!

You get to your laptop and try to access your company’s VPN. It is slow to connect and finally turns an “access is denied due to an unscheduled downtime!” There is no way you can upload the file, and you are unable to reach any other employee who may have access to the file.

You are in a remote location, and your vacation is screwed!

Now, imagine the same situation and consider that you were using an online collaboration tool: You save yours and the company’s valuable, billable time by simply accessing the Internet from your hotel. You would log in to the online collaboration Web site, and just send the sought-after file to your manager. Better yet, you ask him to access the section where files are shared on the online collaboration tool and get the file himself.

Wow! It just takes you 15 minutes to go back to your well deserved vacation mode!

Nowadays, online collaboration tools include features such as:

• professional email integration
• document management
• project management
• shared calendaring
• contact management

A highly cost-effective, online collaboration solution is a carefree alternative to the anxieties and costs inherent with supporting complex collaboration software.

During cost-cutting periods, online collaboration tools offer you the following advantages:

• They allow your employees, customers, and partners to share critical business information with one another from anywhere in the world at relatively lower prices.
• Apart from the one-time or annual payment for using the online collaboration tool, the only money you pay is for an Internet connection!
• Small- to medium-sized businesses benefit from hosted collaboration solutions because there’s no software to install and no servers to maintain, ever!
• The often easy-to-use, intuitive, and self-explanatory user interface of most online collaboration tools makes it faster to get acclimatized to. Your employees don’t need training to start using the online tool like you would require before you take a peek at MS SharePoint, MS VSS, and MS Project.

Online collaboration tools offer you big business collaboration at small business price. Mostly, you can access online collaboration tools for a low monthly fee. You just need to simply add new members as and when your business grows. You do not pay salaries for system administrators, maintenance engineers, and network administrators. You do not need an employee to lose his/ her critical productive hours updating/ arranging information in alternative project management software.

The online tools’ service providers provide you with quick setup and deployment models. They require no IT support. It works across any platform - PC or Mac. Plus, the service provider offers free support, training, and upgrades for life! You save more time and money than you can imagine.

Even though Andy (48webconsulting.com) is using another project management tool, DeskAway impressed him so much that he posted his comments and review here.

Thanks Andy!