Online Collaboration/Project Management and GTD
I am using Nirvana for my personal GTD needs, but I need a
solution for team project management. For tasks like:
- managing larger project with more people involved - easily
communicate and share information regarding the project - assign
ACTIONS to different people and know who is doing what - be
reminded of whatever is necessary for me to do in order to push
things ahead
There are plenty of solutions out there that can do this (such as Mavenlink, Teambox, GroupCamp etc.) I am not interested in a discussion of which system is best (I am using Teambox now), but how you use such a system alongside Nirvana.
I think it is challenging that I don't have everything in one place, and actually have to use two task management systems to stay updated (as I am managing many team projects). Should I just include stuff in Nirvana that are not team projects?
Would be interesting if some of you have some cases or best practices on this one :)
Cheers
Dafyren
2 Posted by Folke on 17 Jan, 2012 06:10 PM
For whatever it might be worth, here is my input:
I have "always" lived with that kind of situation. You have documents and action plans etc that need to be shared between members of each such group that you are dealing with (and sometimes you may even have various IT systems in place to support that), and you also need to keep a clear head and overview about what YOU yourself as a person need to do in TOTAL with respect to all such groups and yourself.
I have always found that I need to use both in parallel, even if it means double-work and a bit of overlap sometimes. Essentially, I hand-copy or summarize everything that I need for my personal overview into my personal "system" (Nirvana). I do use shortcuts and additions, though. For example, I might add new tasks, such as "kick NN's butt about XX" (which was not listed in the shared plan), or "compile stuff assigned to me in minutes xx/xx" (i.e just a reference to a shared document, rather than a complete reiteration)
Support Staff 3 Posted by Elbert McLaughlin on 17 Jan, 2012 07:05 PM
Ditto @Folke. Even in Nirvana-land we use multiple systems. The programmers use Pivotal for agile collaboration, everyone else uses Basecamp. These tools are both designed around project collaboration (vs project control), and this is how we prefer to work. But each individual is free to use whatever works best to keep them in control of their individual mountain pile of action items, which is where Nirvana comes in. Any references to collaboration spaces / documents get copied into Nirvana task notes for easy reference / click to permalink.
We prefer processes to be as light-weight as possible here, and try not to impose work flows on people's work style except in those few places where it's absolutely necessary. That's our company culture and it works for us. I've found that when you force creative thinkers to adhere to too many processes it hinders their ability to work at peak levels.
4 Posted by Phil on 18 Jan, 2012 02:54 AM
It must be a little weird to develop Nirvana while using Nirvana to manage your development of Nirvana.
Almost Escher-esque.
5 Posted by Proximo on 18 Jan, 2012 03:38 AM
I agree and do the same as Elbert and Folke mentioned. I noticed that some productivity apps add the "Social" element to their programs with great intentions, but then they focus too much on the social collaboration options and fail to provide a simple and straight forward solution for managing task and projects.
I think collaboration options are great if you have your team members using Nirvana, but for larger projects that require lots of individuals input and updates, it's better to use a dedicated app for that purpose and tie things into to Nirvana for the granular control process.
Can one app do it all? Maybe, but I have not seen anyone implement this correctly yet. They tend to loose focus on the daily things that make the process easy to manage and add too many social hooks that continue to complicate the entire process.
I think some simple collaboration features are good if you don't go overboard with the idea.
GTD is a system and a system does not have to be one app. Normally a system is comprised of several solutions that work great together to accomplish your goals. I do like the idea of tying great tools together were it makes sense, but I don't think I would try to make any one application do it all. In most cases that would make that one application very complicated and cluttered.
6 Posted by dan Raban on 18 Jan, 2012 12:16 PM
A better solution than basecamp for project collaboration is binfire.com. We use it with a team of 12 developers and 4 biz dev folks and works real nice for divers teams.
7 Posted by søren on 18 Jan, 2012 12:43 PM
Mybee not the rigth place here? but:
Im looking for a simpel "Goal/performance system" or "very small project management alike system" (cloud based - sort of like N2 (cross platform))
I'm a CFO and needs input from colleagues and others for monthly and quarterly reports.
I would love a system where people can see who needs to deliver and who hasnt delivered (public humiliation is a good driver) !
I don't want a big project management system !
I have seen new cloud based "goal/performance systems" where each member can see their own "performance" (have they done the task or not) and a summary page where everybody can see the state of the overall goal and what (who) is missing
Any suggestions ?
8 Posted by dafyren on 18 Jan, 2012 03:52 PM
Thanks for all your ideas and comments guys.. Seems that the best solution is to use Nirvana alongside the project management software, and use Nirvana to track any personal actions for me from all projects, and leave the rest in the project management software. Will try to see how it works out.
9 Posted by Proximo on 19 Jan, 2012 05:18 AM
@Dafyren
Just remember that Nirvana does and can manage projects well. Some projects are more complex than others and this is were you need to decide on the proper tools to tie it all into your GTD system.
Don't make things any harder than they need to be and no simpler than required.
10 Posted by Folke on 19 Jan, 2012 11:30 AM
Post deleted
Support Staff 11 Posted by David McLaughlin on 19 Jan, 2012 08:23 PM
@Soren - now that I can access the posts again, I'm deleting them....
dbm