Team Technology – 3 Essential Productivity Tools

Fortunately for everyone working from home, there’s been a proliferation of tools to support remote collaboration. The good news – there are lots of tools to choose from. The bad news, of course, is that there are lots of tools to choose from!

One of the biggest mistakes I see organizations make with respect to collaboration tools, however, is not which tools they choose, but rather not choosing. Whether in a spirit of employee empowerment or just being unaware of the costs and risks associated with not having a collaboration tool strategy, many organizations are leaving these choices to individual team leaders or departments. Unfortunately, teams and organizations that don’t establish technology standards for the three critical work tasks outlined below are less productive and at increased risk of a cyber breach.

There are many great review articles that outline the pros and cons of specific tools and platforms. I include a few at the end, so I won’t repeat that information here. This article focuses instead on the essential components of a remote collaboration infrastructure.

1. Communication tools

These are tools for sending and receiving information or asking questions – phone, text/SMS, email, Slack, Asana, Skype, etc. An organization should specify one or two “preferred, secure communication channels” for conducting work, then reinforce that choice in day-to-day operations.

Why? Because not doing so means team members waste time negotiating which tool to use or logging into the wrong tool and having to find one another using yet a third tool. In addition to inefficiency, the absence of tool guidelines can contribute to team conflict. One high-tech organization I studied that prided itself on its “flexible work” practices nonetheless experienced recurring team conflicts resuling in deep, persisting divisions within the department, all stemming from differences in communication tool use. And these were educated, experienced, tech-savvy users at a tech company!

Organizational leaders need to make two critical decisions regarding communication tools:

Which tools to designate as secure channels for communicating proprietary information. Communication tool preferences will always exist, and needs vary across departments, project teams, and work contexts. So there may not be a single standard that works for everyone in the organization, but there should be a limited list of “approved” tools.
Which tool(s) should be “always on” during business hours. There will be intervals when an individual’s status is “away” or “busy,” but the expectation is that the designated channel will be frequently monitored throughout the day.

2. Collaboration tools

Collaboration tools enable multiple team members to engage in real-time work on a shared document or object. There are two main tool types that facilitate collaboration:

Web conferencing – e.g., Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Skype, or Adobe Connect. Many of these can also be used for one-to-one or small group communication, but I highlight the real-time collaboration capability because it is essential for keeping team members on the same page and minimizing errors related to misunderstandings.
Document repository – e.g., Sharepoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or a drive on the intranet. Again, the specific tool is less important than having a designated repository that team members can trust as the most up-to-date version of whatever they’re working on. Good use practices include agreement about file naming for purposes of version control, and about archiving old versions to streamline use and decrease the risk of accidentally accessing an outdated version.

It’s good to have a designated primary and secondary web conferencing tool, in case the primary platform goes down.

3. Coordination tools

The final tool category is Coordination tools – e.g., Team Calendar, Project Timeline (Gantt chart), Task Checklist, and Responsibility Chart and many others. Again, many communication and collaboration platforms also include these capabilities. The tool(s) that works best for your team will depend on the number of people with inter-dependent tasks and the amount of task detail that needs to be included for the tool to be useful.

The two critical issues for coordination tools are visibility and consistent updating.

● Visibility/Transparency – The goal of coordination tools is not just to document the plan but also to make planning and status information easily accessible by all participants to ensure all members are basing their work and reporting on a single “Master Schedule.”

● Consistent Updating – The Master Schedule should be considered a living document – updated daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the amount of volatility in your world. Ideally, this would happen during team meetings, so everyone is simultaneously informed of plan changes. This is often best done during team meetings.

Many of the platforms mentioned enable all three – or two of the three – functions, which can further streamline the team’s work and decrease the cybersecurity workload for IT.

Review articles

If you’re still shopping for tools for your long-term collaboration technology strategy, these rating sites with product descriptions may be helpful.

Having a streamlined collaboration technology infrastructure enables your employees to spend more of their time and attention on their actual work rather than trying to locate team members and information.