two men speaking over web camera. sofa, chairOne of the great challenges facing CEOs is improving internal communication. The challenge of this type of policy is to proceed with communication without restricting it; Or, in other words, get the information that:

  • is sufficient but does not generate noise;
  • leave traces that allow recovery;
  • distributed in a differentiated way, without generating gaps.

The importance of internal communication policies is proportional to the size of the organization. However, finding this balance can be especially difficult if you do not have a team where members are accustomed to collaborative work. To reinforce this interconnection, it is necessary to engage its members with strategies that foster the pooling of their skills and allow them to evolve as part of a whole.

When working in project management, it is vital to strengthen communication channels among the members of the initiative. If we think of our team as a coordinated body, they all bring their inventiveness and talent to achieve a common result by assembling their different functions. However, in designing internal communication policies, different procedures and channels will have to be designed:

  • communication between the team of a project

  • communication between projects and teams other than the same organization(external)

While in the first case the communication tends to have a tactical dimension, because it is oriented to improve the quality of the project and the effectiveness of the execution, in the case of communication between projects can have a strategic dimension, oriented to generate synergies and create Shared knowledge that can raise the value of the organization and its capacity for innovation. It is at this point that the management of internal communication may require an expert to coordinate and direct it.

Perhaps a line of work is not as efficient as it may be because its resources are unlinked, that is: employees, technology and processes work in an uncoordinated way. An integrated vision of the tasks assigned to the team members, allows the manager to guide the goals of each one and propose synergies aimed at encouraging reciprocal learning.

Here are some factors that you should take into account to improve the collaboration in your projects and we present the definitive tool to optimize the communications between the members of your team.

Synchronize your computer

A good internal communication plan allows the company that deploys it to save resources and avoid deviations in cost planning. This is because errors have a greater monitoring by all the collaborators, so that corrections not only come from the management of the project, but are generated once they are publicly shared. The added value of promoting self-help among peers increases the sense of authorship that the employee professes towards the object of his work.

Likewise, a project manager who relies on the values ​​of cooperation and emphasizes the role of collective work will be able to propose more agile solutions, since it will have real-time information on the specific availability of each member, and scope of specialization. It can also use the creation of subgroups that, because of the special affinity of their members, are able to solve problems that another conjugation of employees would be unable to address.

Mission impossible without the right tools

Improving the relationships between the different segments that make up a human team can be supported by software that integrates their tasks, documentary contributions and specific annotations into a single conversion platform. Relying on these types of applications often means that project coordinators have a greater capacity to intervene on the overall stage, since they have a global perspective on all operations.

Slack is a great example of business communication that manages to retain the user, retrieve shared information more easily than email, and add features through apps. There are many reasons why you should start using Slack in your office.

For example, the ITM Platform Teambot application allows you to use ITM Platform from Slack, query tasks and projects and navigate to the planning environment without having the Slack chat.

If you are not an ITM Platform customer, you can now try Teambot with a free environment from this trial:

Try ITM Platform Teambot

Little by little

It often happens that employees perceive these types of measures as restrictive, since they involve the obligatory adaptation of all those affected to be implemented. However, once that initial phase of mistrust in the new protocols is overcome, they themselves discover the advantages of working with project management tools.

One of the most common points of friction between employees and a new working methodology is related to the learning challenges involved in using an unknown platform. In this sense, ITM Platform Teambot relies on the leadership of the Slack network within the world of corporate messaging and leverages its infrastructure to offer a more intuitive work experience. Moving to an environment where the user feels comfortable reduces the general rejection associated with technical progress.

To counteract this proven trend that evokes the technological evolution in teams already formed, it is appropriate to devote the time that is necessary to show the benefits derived from working with state-of-the-art solutions. Creating a tutorial for all collaborators, starting a shared video conference presentation or disseminating a written manual, are initiatives that can reduce the step and increase the confidence of the staff in the new methodology.

As you have seen, many factors are involved in the definition of an internal communication plan. Therefore, we must spare no effort in enabling new channels of interaction that ensure corporate synergy and increase the degree of commitment of our employees or subordinates.

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itm-platform-teambot-example

ITM Platform has just released a brand new app for Slack focused on collaborative work management. With ITM Platform Teambot, ITM Platform users can:

  • Recall their projects and tasks
  • Report their hours
  • Report follow-ups in percentages
  • Add comments to tasks and projects

We really believe ITM Platform Teambot is an interesting case study on how to promote SaaS adoption with smart integrations targeted at improving the experience of our user base.

gif-assignations

Enterprise software is the toughest of choices

One of the most common challenges for CTOs and enterprise technology owners lies in how to select a software vendor. Experience says technically great products do not necessarily perform better, while employees tend to stick to what they know.

I don’t think there’s an easy roadmap for choosing good software, nor even an adequate personality that solidly indicates a good decisor: the insightful CTO that evaluates dozens of options before selecting his technical champion can be exactly as wrong as the SME CEO that chooses a vendor based on his guts and contacts.

The secret is in the users

Very often, when a product doesn’t deliver what it promised the problem tends to lie in management, not in the technology: workers, workflows and technology are disconnected.

This is particularly important for project management solutions, that tend to have an asymmetrical use among different stakeholders: while project managers use the most advanced features, team members tend to be bugged down by boring and allegedly unnecessary reporting procedures that don’t add any value to their work. In that context, any friction will kill you. I can’t tell you a more common failure story in project management governance.

In other words: in a software-centric organization, you can’t escape treating your employees as users. The second step is to address user needs as that of internal customers: calculate software adoption as a major component of your technological ROI, as many experts are already doing:

  • 72% of CTOs consider adoption as the main driver for successful SaaS implementation (Sandhill)
  • 43% of CTOs recognize the threat of “shadow IT” and the use of non-validated software (Forrester)
  • 80% of users abandon enterprise mobile apps after a single use. (Boston technology)

So here’s our own experience for treating users as our major customers.

How to get your employees to use project management reporting tools

As any other SaaS company, at ITM Platform we know that if we rely solely on user’s good will for internal reporting purposes, any friction will disengage them. Neither we nor the company admins we work with want that to happen.

How ITM Platform Teambot solves the problem

  1. Go to where the user is

Instead of forcing the user to log into our system merely to report hours or progress, we have chosen to go where our users already are. In other words, we are choosing to support our standalone product with our own app for Slack, because we believe that it may turn into THE tool for enterprise communications and productivity.

  1. Make life easier

Once ITM Platform Teambot is authenticated, a team member will not need to enter into ITM Platform regularly: he or she will be empowered to execute all reporting actions directly from Slack.

By merely typing “/itmplatform list projects”, anybody can see what projects they have been assigned to on ITM Platform. The action takes abot 4 seconds and no browsing action.

What’s more, if you want to log in to ITM Platform to do more complex actions you can do so by merely clicking on the project or task names: they’re all functional hyperlinks!

  1. Productize user experience

The workaround that we have developed with ITM Platform Teambot has allowed us to productize user experience. In fact, what started as an improvement for our existing customers has become the most powerful project management app for Slack that we know of.

Visit Slack’s app directory to add ITM Platform Teambot now or request a demo to find out more on how to make ITM Platform work for your company!

 

Jaime González-Capitel
Senior Content Strategist
ITM Platform

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Slack logoSlack has its own guidelines on how to make the best use of your team chatrooms for managing your projects, and they’re a great way to maximize your productivity if your teams is already using Slack to coordinate your team communications. We particularly find that having a policy to create project-based channels is a great way to ensure that the right people are always getting the right information on time. And if you have a consistent naming guideline, the search box can become a powerful database of everything that is going on in your company!

project, Slack

Source?  Of course, Slack themselves. https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/218130338-Slack-for-project-management#apps-for-project-management

In fact, while the case for Slack may seem already redundant for American companies given the platform's soaring popularity and the power of its free version, many companies in different markets still haven’t heard of Slack, so it’s never too late to go over some of its pillars.

1. Familiarity of the design

Something I often hear around me is that people dislike Slack because they haven't invented anything. Well, you know, anybody familiar with the history of technology will debunk the romantic myth of originality: technology creates technology. New technologies, particularly successful ones, are combinations of already existing artifacts.

Feels familiar

  • So yeah, Slack’s repurposing of an IRC interface is not original, but at the same time it’s crazy brilliant because it goes back to the foundations of consumer satisfaction.

    You can think about it like the free food and napping pods at Google’s offices transformed into a digital environment. Chats and texting feel leisurely, and that’s precisely the feeling you want to give your team when you want to motivate them to use a specific tool. Particularly if you have a young workforce, trying out the giphy command can be the best way to guarantee people open their Slack account every single day.
    respekt

    2. Cell phone reporting

    Slack stands for “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge”.  Although it looks like a chat, it is actually designed as a repository of information that you can search at any time.

    Now imagine how powerful this can be for teams that have workers deployed on the field. On one hand, they can send useful information from their cell phones knowing that the app is a validated form of communication; on the other, project managers will spare time on data management and the enforcement of reporting tools.

    3. An app environment for chatbots

    The main one? You guessed it: while Facebook is driven by procrastination, Slack is driven by productivity.

    The integration of third party applications follows its own patterns, starting with chatbots. Although the passion for chatbots has been heavily criticized by some as a passing fad, the truth is that they are a good example of simple products that do small things, but do them good. No team will have use for every app on Slack, but some of them are really powerful.

    Slack doesn’t have a very targeted public. If you work in an office, you can enjoy it. However, these guys have made sure that they meet the needs of any technological firm. In fact, besides giving access to specific apps for developers that go from GitHub and Heroku, there’s a specific feature that allows to share lines of code.

    Create snippet, Slack

    All in all, the main reason why you want to be on Slack is that, whatever your core business is, you will find ways to save time, connect your team, and increase the effectiveness of your internal communications. At the end of the day, that translates into a more solid organization and better project management.

    Did you know that ITM Platform also has it's own integration with Slack? If you want to check it out, click here.

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team members around a table, sharing on social medias. follow, share, like, phone, computer, tabletSocial networks have entered our lives, and they are here to stay.

Just a little more than a decade ago internet became popular and now we couldn’t live without it. Social networks have gained importance for some years, in both our lives and in the business world.

Actually, it is unthinkable that a company has no presence on the internet or in major social networks.

Project management is no stranger to these changes. In recent years new models of project management using social networks have emerged.

Initially project management 2.0 emerged, better known by reference: PM 2.0. This is the use of web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, for open and integrated online collaboration in a project team.

A more modern concept is Social Project Management. In this case, there is a much deeper integration with social networks. It is a way of understanding the interaction between project management and social networks looking to get the most out of what this new form of communication can bring to the world of business management.

Let’s see what their main contributions are.

Integration with the community

The project has resulted in the achievement of a product or service. Subsequently, it will have to participate in the market and meet the needs of the customers.

A closed project will only contain the views and contributions of members that make up the team. However, it will be closed to the internet community, which is a very large and representative sample of the global market in which the product will be integrated later.

Therefore the use of social networks allow collaborative contributions from individuals outside the team, most likely potential customers, so it will be possible to know their degree of satisfaction with the product before releasing it to the market.

This will foresee the needs that may arise and dynamically adapt the project so that the product meets the needs of the maximum number of customers at the time of its release.

Visibility

Enlisting the help of users of social networks will not only enrich the project but will release it. The internet community will feel part of the team. Really, it is the customers themselves who have designed the product to meet their needs.

During the process, they have exchanged information on the social network platforms visible to everyone, and therefore have formed a new advertising channel.

In addition, being able to work and feel part of the project is a powerful advertising tool. Customers may feel that the product is part of their lives even before it reaches the market.

Intimacy

A project openly in social networks brings you closer to the customers. Technology has added a certain point of dehumanized relations within companies and between them and their clients.

Social networks are the solution to recover the direct treatment through proprietary technologies. Even to get in contact with people with whom it was previously impossible.

Social networks allow you to show the human side of your company and get to know your customers intimately. Maybe people do not dare to say everything you think about your product or do not bother to respond to surveys at street level or by phone. However, social networking breaks all barriers and allows fluid communication between businesses and consumers. 

Diversity

Social networks are a useful tool regardless of the size of your company or the type of project you want to carry out.

In any case, social networks add value to your business. If small, you will have less followers and interaction in social networks, but will have as much room and potential for growth as a multinational.

In fact, you can interact with leading companies in your industry or other areas, achieving a useful communication will result in a mutual benefit.

For all these reasons, social networks are a tool to incorporate marketing strategies and project management. And every day they are more important and crucial to success.

In fact, there have been new marketing strategies based on the use of social networks. An example is known as the marketing funnel.

Therefore, social networks are increasingly used in business. What do you expect to use?

 

Top 5 most read blogs on ITM Platform:

The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

Extra Extra Extra!

Three disastrous project management failures

The project in the face of adversity: what should a project manager do?

What is the Virtual Sock Management or Periodical Online Management?

 

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collaboration mind mapAs the famous poet Mattie Stepanek once said, “when there is collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” But what happens when those who are meant to collaborate are geographically separated, physically incapable of meeting with one another? The answer is virtual collaboration.

Rather than having projects run on generic face-to-face communication, businesses become reliant on technology-mediated communication. This approach integrates online tools into the workplace to help maintain interactions amongst group members. Now you may wonder where and when this would be used? 

Why virtual collaboration?

Simply put, virtual collaboration is made for virtual teams. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “virtual teams” you can always refer back to the article on remote work because the two are very familiar. Regardless, virtual teams are known as groups of individuals who work together despite being geographically dispersed. In this case, they highly depend on communication technologies to link them with one another and keep their team strong.

In fact, many companies today prefer virtual collaboration rather than the traditional one. The reason for this is because with traditional collaboration you run into an unavoidable barrier. Confused? Well, picture this: you and your colleagues sit around a table brainstorming ideas for your latest project. You want to be productive but can only have one person speaking or writing on the white board at a time. Virtual teams don’t come across this problem because technology permits them to make group chats, audio calls, face-time, or even use shared documents and whiteboard all at once.

Even though virtual collaboration has been implemented across millions of businesses it is still a fairly new concept and way-of-work. Many are still unsure how to go about of incorporating virtual collaboration into their own businesses. The following tips can help you with using virtual collaboration for your next project:

1. Create team rules

It’s essential for all team members to understand expectations for virtual communication. Agree upon the standards for decision making, resolving conflicts and meeting business protocol via technological softwares.  Furthermore virtual team members must have a very firm grasp on company objectives and priorities, their particular duties and responsibilities. Because this will be communicated virtually, it’s extremely important that it’s done efficiently to help reduce confusion.

2. Play online games

A fun and effective way to get team members familiar with virtual collaboration is through the use of virtual games. Workers can find online versions of “scavenger hunt” customized to their particular industry. Such games encourage players to pool their knowledge and develop connections with co-workers to solve problems. In many multi-player games, workers have to collaborate and continuously communicate with one another if they wish to survive.

3. Don’t be afraid of social media platforms

When individuals feel comfortable with one another they tend to work better together. Furthermore, people are more prone to being more willing to collaborate if they feel as though their co-workers are similar to them. This is where social media sites step in. The trick is to use these websites to find common ground amongst team-members. Put work aside and use social media tools to encourage and enable employees to communicate about non-work related topics.

Apart from taking these tips into account when planning the development of your own virtual team and the virtual collaboration that inevitably comes along with it, there is still one extremely important thing that must be done. You must find a strong, effective and virtual project management solution such as ITM Platform. ITM Platform is a cloud-based solution therefore it is perfect for virtual collaboration since it can be used across numerous technological devices, at any time and anywhere.

people join in www connections social media network

Learn more about how ITM Platform will help you with the creation of your own virtual team and all of your future projects by visiting http://www.itmplatform.com/en/

Top 5 most read blogs on ITM Platform:

The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

Extra Extra Extra!

Three disastrous project management failures

The project in the face of adversity: what should a project manager do?

What is the Virtual Sock Management or Periodical Online Management?

 

Isidora Roskic-Blogger ITM Platform

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