Google sites

It has been pointed out that the example link has been removed by the website. I wasn't aware that this occurred. Are you happy to proceed without having seen this?

Software development projects can be a tricky business at the best of times, but if you throw in a virtual team, some time differences and possibly different cultures and there is definitely some cause for concern.

The following can be applied to any business project and is more about making use of ebusiness activities rather than software development.

Projects require a massive amount of communication depending on the number of stakeholders involved. The bigger and more complex the project the greater the number of stakeholders. Equally the larger the project team. Developing communication within the project team is critical and ensuring everyone has all the communication can be a challenge. If the project is over an extended period there is a danger that one member of the team may leave or be off sick. It then makes it difficult to get new project team members up to speed.

Recently I have used Google sites to overcome these issues, providing a free collaboration space for developing your project it offers small businesses a great way to communicate as a team.

In my case all project documentation has gone on to the site and designs for websites are uploaded as pages. This then ensures that everyone is working from the latest documents, plus you can add comments or questions against screens or documents. It is key that all questions that would usually occur in emails are captured in the site. This provides a stored conversation that other or new team members can reference at a later date. It also prevents side conversations occurring. The whole thing is searchable which makes it easy to find things and like a wiki people can add to it as they like. (Although various admin rights can be granted)

The project team have liked it as a collaboration tool and the consensus is that it has really helped with the communication. It also notifies people when changes occur so no one is left in the dark about updates to the project.

You don't have to use Google there are other options, but as an out of the box solution it has worked well so far. I will probably start to use the same function to collaborate with clients in the near future as we operate an open and honest policy.