Tools for Enabling
Collaborative Environments
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| Freedom from
Terminal Sameness Newsletter - Issue #63 |
July 2010 |
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What comes to mind when you
hear the term collaboration or collaborate? My definition is enablement
of an
environment that minimizes disconnects and misunderstandings between
individuals on a team. A collaboration strategy should also foster
sharing of
ideas, concepts and visions of the individual contributors while
keeping the
team current of the status of the project. Attaining a truly successful
collaborative environment will always eliminate any team execution
issues
related to geographic boundaries. This newsletter is going to touch on
a few
tools that provide a higher level of collaboration for your projects.
Jeff Jorvig, IC NPD Coach
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Items of Interest to New Product
Development Teams
Leadership Quote of the month:
"Not
all goals are equal, but all goals contain the same foundational
elements. When it comes to setting goals, we often don't know what we
don't know. And, what you don't know can - and most likely will - hurt
you by limiting or compromising your success."
-- Gary Ryan Blair
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Tools for Enabling
Collaborative Environments
The word collaborate or collaboration is overused, in fact
it is safe to say that it's meaning has been minimized to the point
where any
team is in fact identified as a collaborating machine. Here's the
dictionary
definition of collaborate: To work
together, especially in a joint
intellectual effort. "Working together" -
that means more than just working on the same project.
It means
synchronization, communicating, shared visions, gaining consensus,
sharing
ideas, informed decisions, understanding contribution and always
knowing
status. The sharing of files as a collaborative mechanism for projects
is archaic
and has no place in a high tech industry! Technology has brought us
much, much
better ways, if we choose to explore them.
There are an abundance of tool solutions available today
that foster collaboration and I wanted to share three specific types
with you;
planning, group chat and brainstorming. I heavily favor hosted SaaS
(Software
as a Services) solutions due to their cross platform availability and
the
collaborative enabling aspect of centralized data for all to see.
Hosted
"cloud" solutions are all web-based interfaces and require nothing to
be
installed on your computer.
Scheduling &
Managing the Process
First off, in an environment that talks of collaboration, it
certainly does not make sense that a single person has a view of the
status,
tasks due, next steps, overall project flow and so on for any project.
The days
of a singe person maintaining a schedule file should long ago gone the
way of
the horse and buggy. There should be no secrets and certainly each
individual
should be responsible for keeping their tasks current... did I hear a
gasp?
There are many hosted (web interface) solutions that cover
the needs of centralized, multiple platform (even Linux), multiple-site
and
user-friendly project planning/management tools. Find them via a search
string
like "SaaS project management tool". My favorite is PIEmatrix due to its slice
concept, allowing the establishment of predefined best practices for
each NPD
role.
If you are concerned about your planning data residing
outside the corporate firewall, many of these companies provide
internally
hosted solutions also. Personally I don't agree with such concern; look
at how
many large companies have embraced saleforce.com and allowed their
sensitive
customer relationship data outside the firewall.
Chat
When you think of chat the last area that you may see
benefit of this social technology is managing teams and projects. The
latest
chat technology standards known as XMPP (Extensible Messaging and
Presence
Protocol) provide much more flexibility in terms of group level
chatting
(Persistent Group Chat), opening an interesting door for project
collaboration.
Consider that specific project group chats could be setup
for various chip modules, EDA, verification, requirements, integration,
timing
analysis, synthesis, test, system verification and so on. Team members
can
subscribe to only groups of interest to them. This then becomes a real
time
discussion and communication area for items of importance to that
particular
chat group. There is even a history capability for documenting the
discussion.
Via this technology worldwide real time collaboration can become a
simple task
for projects spanning multiple continents.
Individual chat servers could be setup inside the corporate
firewall for each project and then configured to provide specific chat
groups
of interest for that project. There are also several hosted chat
solutions that
provide similar features. The technology exists, is supported on
multiple
platforms, including smart phones, and costs range from free to low.
Why not
give it a try? Search for "persistent group chat" to find hosted
solutions.
Check out http://xmpp.org for client/server
possibilities.
Brainstorming
There is no better way of collaborative brainstorming than
the use of mind maps. Many are hosted and allow real time map sharing
for
multi-site brainstorm sessions. Review last month's newsletter for more
information on mind mapping.
Collaboration or
Extinction
The largest issue I see with project
execution is due to a lack in the most fundamental of capabilities, a
deficiency
in individual communication. If people are not communicating well they
are
certainly not successfully collaborating. Tools that enable better
communication will also facilitate the much-needed collaboration that
will
bring about change. A cure for "Terminal Sameness" is an incremental
choice,
one antidote at a time.
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| How I
can Help
"Providing
solutions to the systemic project challenges that quietly steal early
revenue opportunity - Put simply, a cure for Terminal Sameness"
- Collaboration
Implementations - Contact me if you need to foster a higher
level of collaboration for your teams. Chaos reigns where collaboration
is caged.
- Discovery
& Solution - Do
you need to find and remove the the barriers to a predictable and
streamlined new product flow? Maybe you need to understand the history
of past failed project activities. Our Discovery & Solution
services will provide a cure for Terminal
Sameness before it's too late!
- Requirements
workshops
- I will facilitate the timely closure of a high quality set of
requirements for a specific product. If you have a complicated project
where requirements closure is
critical, this would be an ideal candidate for a workshop. Closure means consensus. More
information can be found here.
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NPD Flow
Management - Web based best practices, flow, task, deliverable
& monitoring of the project portfolio. Details here.
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Register
Management - Tool
for synchronization of register information between hardware, firmware,
validation and documentation. Delivers the RTL code, verification code
and documentation for common or custom bus interfaces. A must have for
embedded systems!
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NPD team one day workshop to improve
planning, execution and
monitoring skills for design projects.
- Ready made downloads:
schedule, checklist, analog design guide.
- Increase management bandwidth via Virtual NPD Coach.
- Full listing of common services here.
Contact me today via email, or phone at
480-442-6730. |
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Feedback
To increase the value of this newsletter for you I would like
to hear your comments.
- What do you like or not like about this
newsletter?
- What subjects would you like to see covered in
the future?
- How is the format?
- Ask me a question related to new product
development and I will anonymously post and answer it here in this
section.
Please email me here with any questions,
comments or suggestions that will help me better serve my readers. I
would enjoy hearing from you.
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