Collaboration Management: Risky Business

Challenges involved in collaboration management

With the popularity of the social web and increased reliance on social product development technology, collaboration management presents many challenges. Here are three:

• • Ensuring good communication among development team members: This could prove to be challenging as today it is commonplace to have development teams internal but also external to the organization (physical distance). As virtual teams become a more viable option for organizations to include internal and external stakeholders on the development team, it becomes increasingly more difficult to get everyone working together. When physical distance and product complexity are involved it is a challenge to get and keep everyone working on the same page.
  • Including customers in the collaboration process: Companies are extending their product development efforts to also include customers as active co-designers in the product development process. Recognizing the value of engaging with customers to discover what they think about products seems easy enough, but integrating customer insight into every step of the development process requires implementation and management of an effective process of collaboration.
  • Using available collaborative product development software: Collaboration management can only be possible when the right technological tools support its activities. Companies need to be able to implement the tools that will support their immediate and longer-term collaboration management needs.

Effective Collaboration Management with OneDesk

OneDesk opens up the lines of communications between all stakeholders: customers, suppliers, business partners and employees. With easy-to-use social collaboration tools, getting work done is simple and interactive.

Here are some of the main collaboration management features:

• Real-time collaborative editing
• Collaboration inbox
• Discussions
• Chat
• and much more…

Share your thoughts: What collaboration tools do you and your team use to help simplify your product development activities?