Creating Team Collaboration Through Various Tools

Blog:

One of the top project management trends for 2020 is all about team collaboration. Project management itself is a team role with all those involved in each project. You need to utilize the team at any given point during each project to garner input, approvals, updates and the like. But how do you do that successfully when your team is working in remote locations throughout the country?  

Companies are following trends to allow employees to work from home more now than ever before. They are seeing the productivity increase when they show trust in their employee to take responsibility to get the job done while not always having to be in the office setting. With this flexibility comes the hard work on making communication work. What is the preferred method of communication for your own team members? Each person may have their own preferred method; phone, face-to-face, instant messaging, email. Our team is spread out over the US from east to west with some being in the office more often than others. What works best for us to collaborate as a team is to have a group chat running. That doesn’t mean that we don’t call, email or speak in person, but on a daily basis allowing all to respond in real time as though we are having a conference call allows us to continue to work on our projects while keeping up with needs of the team.  

Project management tools are another great option to keep your team updated on all your projects. These tools are getting more intuitive and user friendly each year. We currently use Inspire Planner as it integrates our projects into our Salesforce instance. We can link our project plans to Accounts and Opportunities to keep other departments within our company updated as to our progress, promoting cross-team collaboration.  

Inspire Planner allows us to utilize the Salesforce Chatter functionality, link files to tasks, and assign users tasks to be completed. These tasks then show up in their Salesforce tasks whether that user has an Inspire Planner license or not. Having the ability to assign tasks is another way we collaborate with other teams within our company. They are notified that we are working on a project for them with details on the task that we have assigned. This tends to spark the conversation on the task/project at hand when it is most convenient for that person. When we allow others the opportunity to respond via their preferred communication method, we are more likely to receive a quicker response. 

Like most teams, each of our team members has their own job-specific skill set. Often times, this causes a few to be busier than others at various times throughout the year. If we didn’t correctly use team collaboration skills, there would end up being a large backlog of projects to be completed all within short timelines. The more similar the skill sets of multiple team members, the easier it is to communicate the need for additional resources on projects. Through team collaboration, we can provide that additional assistance when one member is overloaded with projects. We do this through our open communication in our group chat, individual chat, phone calls or emails. Again, depending on which method works best for each team member, we can adapt to the preferred method for everyone.  

“Team Collaboration” is a fancy term for the tried and true “Teamwork.” Our team is fortunate enough to have been hired not only for our skill sets but for how our personalities work among the team and company culture. So just like a group of friends, we ‘talk’ with each other on how projects are coming along. When one person on the team has less projects coming in, asking, “Where can I help?” comes into play often. Utilize all the tools that have been given to you from the spoken word to technology. When it doesn’t seem like work to communicate with your team, you know you have reached success in team collaboration!