According to Wikipedia : “Collaborative planning software helps people plan projects and activities together on the peer base. Everyone can equally contribute, assign tasks and track the progress.
Collaborative planning software is a mixture of project management software, groupware and collaborative software. Tools such as Wrike enable users to organize projects and activities as project management tools, discuss, and work on. The added value of such software is that it allows you to decentralize control and responsibility for overall plans and permit online access to plans that is equal for all related participants.”
On any project where a large number of project members, many external resources and others are involved in a project ,a good information flow is must. But what happens is that , the project administration gets so overwhelmed that both the project manager and project members lose focus on the most important aspect of the project i.e. the outcome.
Some of the features for selelcting the right Collaboration Planning tool for you :
1. Ease of Use and Learning Curve : If the tool is too complicated and requires a lot of time to master it , then surely the less no of people in your organization will use it.
2. Training : Ask the vendor whether they offer training or not? It is really very important.
3. Customer support: Do they offer tele /e-mail/onsite support ?
4. Future updates and upcoming modules.
With the help of these Collaborative planning tools, the project manager gains birds eye view of all the projects he is responsible for. The Senior management is aware of what is going on every project and can easily focus on the strategic goals of the organization. These project managemenet 2.0 tools help to gather the information and make it easily accessible to all the geographically scattered team members.Since we can now work together online even when located in different parts of world these Collaborative planning softwares are called Web2.0 tools.
CONCLUSION:
The use of innovative project management technologies promises to have a profound effect on how the different projects are managed today. And these tools let organizations acquire the
key ingredients to success in any business — they help organizations make better and faster decisions.
But we need to remember the most important thing that is the tools alone, no matter how advanced or sophisticated are they , won’t guarantee project success . They can surely make the job easier and Project management 2.0 should be viewed as a tool that helps organizations to execute designated projects effectively and efficiently . People, processes and tools should be in balance. Collaboration Planning Tools alone can hardly do the whole job.
