In our specialized world everything must be perfect. From a small thing like a mobile phone up to a brand new Aston Martin we expect only the best.
To ensure this high quality a product is created and developed by lots of people, everyone a professional in his own domain. This kind of development process needs much more communication between the involved people.
There are lots of different software tools available for project management. But what is important? Which features should you take care of, when you look for a groupware?
A modern, team capable platform must be easy to use. No one wants to spend time, finding out how things work. When you need to contact someone from your team you should be able to do this with just a few clicks. Otherwise, you won't use your new communication system which will make it obsolete.
What should your new groupware do? Which functions are a must have? I'll make it short. You need appointments, tasks, notes, emails, a contact manager and a chat. This is all you need to organize your and your team member's day and to communicate with them. Of course there are platforms with much more functions available, but remember: The more features a program has, the more difficult it becomes to keep track of the important things. When people have too many options, they simply refuse and won't use your new system.
Online or offline? You can use an online system. The benefits are that you don't have to set up everything and the system will be available over the Internet. But this approach has also some disadvantages. What happens when the provider (where your data remains) goes offline for some reason? Will you be able to access your data when you don't have an Internet connection? And finally: Do you trust these foreign guys, that you give them all your data? It's often safer to invest some time and set up a local system at your company. All data remains at your place and modern groupware systems offer the possibility to access your files via the Internet, too.
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