A Teams and Tools Guide
11 Signs Your Team Needs a Networked Tools System
1. Discussion about tasks, issues, customers, products, etc. happens in email. Topics splinter into several threads, so multiple topics are hidden in one thread: references, insights, decisions and accountability are lost. The buried information results in reduced productivity, errors and missed opportunities, increased project cost, or diminished customer satisfaction.
2. Team members spend time re-creating presentations and other documents that already exist on others' PCs or the company intranet. When new documents are filed on the intranet, others don't know they exist; the cycle repeats, and more time is lost.
3. Many files travel between team members and a client, but they're all sent as attachments to emails, and not always distributed to the right people. [Versus placed in a common, client-accessible, branded online space that allows you and the client to retrieve or update the files.]
4. 'Brainstorm' meetings for a new product, customer, or project are supported only by your team's brains (memories). They attend those meetings without access to relevant institutional memory: previous plans or lessons-learned documents from earlier, related projects to guide and speed the new project.
5. Sometimes team members don't know the status of a project or the location of a key document or file. They frequently 'ask around,' send email, or call meetings to learn status of projects, tasks or customer situations. Similarly, they burn up their teams' time with emails or calls to find a document and ask for a copy.
6. There is no central location where all materials, discussions, tasks and status reports related to a project are stored. Similarly, there is no 'filing system' for storing electronic documents so staff know where to find documents they know exist. Documents central to the business (proposals, specs, MRDs) are inconsistently stored. Many are attached to emails buried in PCs. Unlike when paper files were rigorously organized, labeled and stored in file drawers, there is no method for organizing the documents central to a business. Costs include wasted staff time seeking materials, loss of valuable insight from prior projects, and impaired productivity for new, high-value hires.
7. Staff have no effective means to find valuable information that the company has invested to create, but they don't know exists. For example, a department invests in consultants or staff time to generate a valuable custom report. Months after delivery it cannot be found, or it never benefits staff outside of the original group.
8. When staff and resources are distributed across multiple projects, with task assignments on multiple projects, there's no way to see all tasks assigned to any one person, identify schedule and resource conflicts, prioritize their tasks, etc.
9. Reviews of plans, schedules, specs, resumes, etc., are done by ad hoc emailing to people who, in the sender's judgment, are the ones who should be reviewing the material. There is no group process for gathering and sharing comments in meetings. 'Reply-all' emails trigger 'delete' behavior: they're not read by those who need to read them and open the attached, marked-up documents.
10. Remote participants in phone conferences can hear the dialogue, but can't see the projections or the white boards. Remote participants don't receive agendas or other materials handed out in the meeting room, and don't contribute as much as they could to the meeting. Remote team members have less ability to access company information than co-located team members.
11. Team members jointly responsible for creating plans and other materials must email each other their iterations of the ultimate deliverable, working serially rather than in parallel. It's difficult for them to jointly create the deliverable, to see it taking shape in real time, to communicate comments simultaneously to all document creators within the shared context of the document. (vs. within differing contexts as each reads it among their many emails).