Nevsun Resources is a mining company with headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia, and its biggest project is developing mines in Eritrea, a small country on the east coast of Africa. Using a browser-based, software-as-a-service project management tool, logistics clerks, engineers, and project managers are sharing documents, cost outlines, and project schedules across continents, giving CFO Peter Hardie in North America what he calls a “real-time review” of the project in a fairly remote area of Africa. “The spectrum of people using it is broad, and that’s what we were hoping we would get out of the system,” Hardie says.
The system -- called Unifier, from the vendor Skire -- lets Hardie “bridge the time and distance gaps that exist between the project principals in Vancouver, Eritrea, and South Africa,” he says. It helps Nevsun control costs and track expenditures down to the invoice level.
Nevsun gets a real-time handle on its Eritrean mining operation.
Social networking norms increasingly are creeping into formal project planning and product development tools and processes. And at many companies, the rules, both formal and informal, for how to use those social computing tools often aren’t written down. Nevsun’s system lets people comment and ask questions about a record or specific aspect of the project. But there’s always a way to opt out of the collaboration flow. Asked if he uses the ad hoc communication capability in the Unifier system, Hardie says: “Me, personally? No.” Instead, if he’s reviewing specific costs and has a question, he’ll simply pick up the phone and call somebody.
As almost all business becomes global in nature, and business processes increasingly are managed online, companies continue to push the limits of technology created to manage projects and teams across time zones and geographies. The goal is to communicate more effectively, work more closely with partners, leverage ephemeral information sources, and ultimately get as close as possible to the feel of what’s really going on.
Nevsun’s experience with Skire is just one cross-continent example. In product development, vendors such as Dassault Systèmes, Siemens, and others are plowing Web 2.0 capabilities into their product life-cycle management platforms, adding collaboration and complexity.
Running alongside these formal platforms is the aggressive use of Internet-centric social networking platforms and tools -- wikis, blogs, instant messaging, presence awareness, peer reviews, search -- to foster internal teamwork and tap into wider communities of knowledge. Yet IT teams are wrestling with how these tools function in concert with collaboration technology, such as document management, project management, and product development systems. Are they adjuncts, integral parts, or even replacements for tried-and-true software?
Plenty of CIOs also are wary of the data integration, security, and productivity issues raised by the introduction of social networking technology in the enterprise, especially when tied to a process as critical as developing a new product or completing a project. Yet some have embraced the dynamic nature of social computing and turned it to their advantage.
A few years ago, I started asserting that any Agile projects should have a companion wiki to capture design ideas and decisions so that the information is not lost in the rush and can be used as a "document" on many levels.
Nowadays, I'm actually thinking that the social networking tools can be more effectively used in an intranet environment. My thoughts are as follows:
Wikis for requirements, design, operational support, and general knowledge capture for maintenance and support.
Facebook-like apps for identifying key people and building cohort links to build project teams on the fly.
Twitter-like apps for quick dissemination of information to select groups of people; while IM apps could have the same function, the interface is cleaner and quicker.
Of course, most places will require capturing the information and archiving it for legal and regulatory requirements but that is easy to do in an intranet.
Now the fun part is when we open it up to the Internet at large. Of course, a company has to be careful about what it says there, as well as put some controls on content (relevance to business). But that being said, these can be the next evolution of the bulletin board systems. Consider the following ideas:
Wikis for knowledge bases and for user-supplied solutions, workarounds, and product insights.
Facebook links for community expertise and fan-following of company matters-an interesting set of PR possibilities are possbile here.
Twitter links for quick dissemenation of key information such as new product announcements, bug fixes/new releases, key announcements, etc.
Since these will be public, they will have to make sure no company confidential information is released, like early earnings reports, unathorized new product info, etc. Some training by Legal and HR will probably suffice...that could be computer-based training and be incorporated into the company policy manual. Yeah, necessary blah-blah-blah stuff, but once it is clear what is off-bounds, there is a lot a company can do with it.
We used a wiki at my company for developing and refining requirements for a new enterprise application.I can say that this was the best requirements gathering process I have ever been involved in!
People are still doubting about the effective role social networks can play in enterprises and in project management. This example really shows that social networkings could have a bright future in enterprises. It is just wonderful how a remote and developing area such as Eritrea can benefit from this medium.
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