Today's project teams face many challenges. They must overcome the complexity of working together from different locations. Schedules are more compressed than ever and budgets keep getting smaller, yet the the scope of projects seems to expand almost without limits. Project teams also need to manage constant change, amidst an overload of information and communications. Trying to keep project activities synchronized in this highly chaotic environment is one of the primary reasons so many projects fail.
For teams to work together effectively, they must have real-time access to current project data. If that data is dispersed across disconnected tools not readily available to all team members, it is a virtual certainty that critical decisions will be made relying either on outdated or incomplete information. A workspace unifies all of your project data in one location, serving as a single source of truth, and ensuring that decisions are based on the most current and complete information. With data unified, each team member can then rely on each other.
Activities on a project need to be carefully sequenced. From handling requirements management to validating deliverables, coordinating and synchronizing team activities is critical to meeting project goals. To effectively align teams, all project activities must be visible and transparent. Visibility and transparency enables team members to track the progress of other team members, so that dependent tasks are timed to synchronize. Activities that are falling behind schedule are quickly identified, and can be adjusted by adding new resources or re-prioritizing assignments. And with easy linking of project data, be it change requests to requirements, or test results to defects, team members with different roles and responsibilities stay connected and in-sync.
Communication and collaboration are fundamental to every project. When team members don't communicate well or are unaware of critical communications, teams get out-of-sync and projects fail. Hence, communication must be completely transparent. Team members need to see questions, comments, and suggestions relating to any project activity, task, requirement, defect, and more. No more wondering whether you were on the last e-mail thread about a critical project activity. With transparency, all communications are readily apparent, so that all you have to do is look.
