virtual team collaboration
When working in a team, the ease in which information is shared across the team is always critical to success. Team communications today typically comprise of face-to-face meetings, audio conferencing and email.
Video conferencing has been around for many years but due to it traditionally requiring specialist conferencing suites, has never caught on in a large way. More successfully, the use of collaborative web tools combined with audio conferencing is reducing the demand for face-to-face meetings.
We're now entering an exciting period for the development and main stream use of new collaboration and communications technologies. Many of which have been facilitated by the wide availability of broadband, always on, internet access.
These technologies include:
- instant messaging
- Instant messaging (IM) allows you to have real-time online conservations with your team using a simple application on your computer. more...
- wiki
- A wiki is a website where the content can be updated by anyone in the team using a very simple and easy to learn language. more...
- RSS – "Really Simple Syndication"
- RSS supports the distribution of content across teams. more...
- Voice over IP (VoIP)
- Why pay for phone calls between a virtual team. more...
Where to start?
We'll assume it's a given that for effective vitual team working you must have reliable email and telephone communications. Beyond this the first step I'd recommend for improving collaboration is to set-up a project wiki and an instant messaging service.