Project collaboration is a technique for teams and team leaders to plan, coordinate, control, and monitor the project they’re working on. This collaborative project management technique works across departmental, corporate, and national boundaries, and is particularly beneficial as projects become more complicated.
Why is project collaboration important?
Project collaboration, which has always been basic to efficient project management, has become even more of a buzzword with the move toward remote teams and shifting data to cloud servers. But what does it mean to collaborate on a project? Simply said, collaboration entails working together to achieve a common goal. Isn’t it exactly what project work entails? That’s not entirely true.
Tools for project collaboration
All of the task management, team communication, and resource management software features, apps and platforms that allow project managers to manage their teams’ workflow can be summed up as project collaboration tools.
- Kanban boards
Kanban boards are task management systems that visualize workflow and allow for team participation. This online collaboration tool divides the project cycle into columns, each of which contains task carts.
- Gantt charts
Traditional project management is built on the foundation of Gantt charts. When developing the project schedule, project managers utilize them to organize work, link dependencies, and create milestones. Some project management software goes even farther, allowing you to filter for the critical path and create a baseline for tracking project deviance as you execute the project plan.
- Project calendar
A project calendar lists all of the project’s significant dates. It can also be used to keep track of one’s own work and deadlines. When the project calendar is shared, everyone can see the broad picture and stay on the same page without being distracted by meetings, emails, or other distractions.
Tips to improve Team collaboration
- Team building activities
There are team-building exercises that can help team members bond faster. These can range from simple activities like taking everyone out to lunch to more planned games like charades, sports, and so on. Whatever you decide, you should begin forming more collaborative teams prior to the project.
- Focus on team communication
The glue that ties any collaborative environment together is communication. Regular meetings, setting up a real-time chat service or even a message board are all options for quickly disseminating information and collecting comments from team members.
- Equip team with right task management tools
Managing tasks is one way to get teams to work more collaboratively as well as productively. It’s best to have a variety of tools available to your team, such as Kanban boards, task lists, and so on. If all of these project views are updated with the same real-time data, everyone can collaborate more effectively using the tools they’re most familiar with.
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