Update on Whiteboards for Virtual Teams
Posted by: czwpadmin in Uncategorized on September 1st, 2010
image by jm3 (flickr.com)
The design goal of many collaboration tools is to reproduce as closely as possible some aspect of the face-to-face meeting experience so that virtual project teams can be as productive as co-located teams. What I have found is that some tools developed for virtual teams actualy work better than the process they were built to replace. A great example of this is the whiteboard. Online whiteboards available today for free make many common whiteboarding tasks easier than the old fashioned flip-charts or dry-erase markers. You can use electronic whiteboards to brainstorm, problem solve, describe complex concepts, create flow-charts, or even vote on issues as a team. All it takes to be successful is a tool that has a minimum of features that are well-implemented and intuitive.
Just like desktop sharing tools (see my last blog), online whiteboards have come a long way in the past few years. There are now many free tools that have some excellent features and would be a great addition to any virtual teams’ tool box. I will mention a few here and comment on their pros/cons. Note: this is just a sample of current offersings and not intended to be an exhaustive list nor an endorsement of, nor recommendation for, any particular tool.
Let me start with a list of the Must and Want features of the perfect whiteboard tool:
Must
- Multiple users (at least 10) can make changes and see those made by others nearly instantly during a collaborative session
- Editing a text object is done in-place (no pop-ups or special right clicking)
- It is easy to move text objects around using a simple click-and-drag mouse movement
- The free-hand sketching tool creates a smooth line (no jagged line segments)
- Line width for lines and boxes is adjustable
- You can save a whiteboard and send it to others to open up in another session with all objects editable to continue working
- You can edit all objects to resize, move, delete, and change colors and other attributes
- You can add pages and move back and forth between them
- It is very fast to get into a session and easy to invite others to join
Want
- The canvas area can grow as the drawing grows
- Different people can work on different pages at the same time
- Works on all platforms (PC, Mac and Linux)
- All data exchanged is secure (SSL)
- Users can paste objects (text and images) from their local clipboard onto any page
- Templates are available to get teams started with common tasks such as voting, fishbone diagramming, affinity diagramming (KJ), flow-charting, RACI charts, etc.
Here are a few tools I’ve tried recently:
Vyew
A very complete collaboration tool set with built-in desktop sharing, snapshot, audio and conferencing bridge services. Build on a Flash platform.
Pros
- one of the best implementations of a whiteboard I’ve found to date. Very easy to draw smoothly, create and move text and edit objects.
- you can add sticky note-like comments into a drawing and position them where they apply
- the desktop sharing feature includes some of the whiteboard tools for markup.
Cons
- It is free, but you have to deal with ads.
Dabbleboard
Has a good compliment of tools (all the required ones). Has an interesting method of selecting and modifying objects on the drawing surface.
Pros
- includes a list of participants and a chat window to give people a back-channel
Cons
- it is not easy to move text around as it requires several clicks to grab an object
ImaginationCubed
A product from GE (I’m not sure why they got into this business). Although an interesting tool to play with, it is way too combersome to be useful in a collaborative meeting.
Pros
- Slick animation and implementation
Cons
- this tool falls into the category of whiteboards that implement a traditional whiteboard too closely. You can’t edit things that are placed on the board. You can only undo and erase them. This completely defeats the most powerful aspect of an electronic whiteboard, editability, and makes brainstorming extremely difficult.
Scribblar
Very nice and clean design with all the required element including a participant list and chat widget.
Pros
- includes built-in audio broadcasting from one to many (I’ve not tried it to check the quality)
- can take snapshots of work in progress. Maintains a list of these ‘assets’ for download or recovery to the whiteboard.
Cons
Twiddla
Twiddla’s Mac-like user interface makes for a pleasant visual experience. It implements an interesting paradigm for erasing that is sort of whiteboard like. You can erase parts of an object as if the object is a scribble on a real whiteboard. But, when you move the object you can see the original object unerased appear. Very disconcerting.
Pros
- includes audio channel, chat window and an easy invitation process
- nice facilities for adding and managing uploaded objects
- includes a tool for creating mathematical formulas and embedded code fragments (why?)
Cons
- really poor jagged lines when drawing with the pencil
Thinkature
This tool has a very different paradigm where you create ‘cards’ that contain text that are easily moved and connected using dynamic lines and arrows. Should be great for flow-charting or creating other types of associative diagrams.
Pros
- very smooth free-hand drawing tool
Cons
- lacks most of the drawing objects you would expect
- text object always has a box around it, making brainstorming messy
As you can see, there are a number of really decent solutions out there for you to try with your teams. If you have had any experience with these or any others, please comment on this post as I’d love to hear what you have found that works for your team.
Update on Desktop Sharing for Virtual Teams
Posted by: Loyal in Communication, Teams, Telecommute, Tools on May 4th, 2010
image by Steven Parker (flickr.com)
A well-performing virtual team makes effective use of a wide range of collaboration tools. After the various forms of communication discussed in my last post, any self-respecting virtual project team must have access to a decent desktop sharing tool. In the past few years, the options and quality available here have grown significantly. To work well for a virtual team, your desktop sharing tool should have most (ideally, all) of these key features:
Must Have
- Fast and simple process to get connected to a session (< 5-10 secs)
- Share with up to 10 people with no performance impact
- Connect people across firewalls
- Integrated whiteboard for brainstorming and note-taking
- Snapshots and mark-up the resulting image
- Save mark-ups in a standard file format for distribution to others
- Lightweight client-side component that installs quickly and simply
- Fast and simple switch between desktops being shared
Want
- Integrates with a mainstream IM client (or at least has its own built-in)
- Has a list of who is in the session
- Has a hands-up queue for managing questions in larger groups
- Is secure (encrypted stream)
- Can share more then one person’s desktop at the same time
Of course, none of the tools available today have all of these features, so you must make tradeoffs for your particular situation.
For this post I will not talk about the large providers of desktop sharing that charge for their service, such as Microsoft Live Meeting, WebEx, and GoToMeeting. I will instead discuss some recent experience I’ve had with a few of the free desktop sharing applications I have found. If you have had some experience with a tool you like, please comment on this post. I’d very much like to hear what you have found useful.
Note: I have included a comment about Linux compatibility, as this is a platform used by many of my colleagues and thus important for my particular collaboration needs. Since Microsoft Windows is the primary desktop used by most, this probably will not be an issue for you. However, I’ve found that although most of my colleagues do have access to a Windows PC, all it takes is one ‘purist’ on Linux who can’t contribute during a meeting to have the effectiveness of the session drop dramatically.
This is Microsoft’s answer to NetMeeting-through-firewalls, but without the voice or instant messaging. It is relatively easy to connect to another Windows user (but not perfect as I’ve had problems connecting with some people);
Pros: Has the usual Microsoft polish, so it is easy to use and attractive; up to 15 people can share;
Cons: No whiteboard; Does not work with Linux (no surprise here)
This is a very nicely done tool that integrates a free phone conferencing service and whiteboard along with a desktop sharing engine. The service provides persistent storage of session data so that your team can come back and update the contents. Unfortunately, it does not work on the Linux platform (at least not natively).
Pros: Excellent whiteboard for multi-user collaboration (one of the better ones I’ve used); Persistent content
Cons: Does not work with Linux.
Yes, Skype includes a very simple desktop sharing feature to compliment its rather impressive voice and video sharing. The feature appears to be implemented as a compressed video stream and is sent in place of a video channel.
Pros: Very easy to start a desktop sharing session once you find with switch (call > “share your screen” > “share full screen”); Fast to share, once you have the Skype connection established;
Cons: Works only between two people; Does not work with Linux (yet?); You cannot take control of a shared desktop, so remote support is not as easy; The compressed video stream has poor resolution, making it difficult for someone on a small screen to read text on another PC.
Although somewhat complex in its installation and usage, this is a very nice tool for small team collaboration. I really like the on-screen mark-up (they call it a whiteboard, but it isn’t really) where you can draw over anything on your screen. It handles up to 10 participants.
Pros: Attractive; interesting features; excellent fidelity of desktop image.
Cons: Does not work on Linux (Windows and Mac only); screen sharing starts immediately unless you configure it otherwise; there is no obvious indication you are sharing your screen.
These are not necessarily the best nor the only desktop sharing solutions available…just the ones I’ve come across lately or have had some experience with. In fact, desktop sharing appears to be quite a hot area now with products popping up all over the place. Some other names to check out: yugma.com, teamviewer.com, and yuuguu.com. I’ve not had a chance to play with these, but they look interesting.
If your virtual team does not make use of the desktop sharing tool, I would love to hear from you why not. Being able to share desktops in a virtual meeting is a must-have for all project teams.
In my next post I will talk about my recent experiences with a few of the popular virtual whiteboard tools.
Update on Key Communications Technologies for Virtual Teams
Posted by: Loyal in Communication, Teams, Teleconferences, Tools, Uncategorized on May 3rd, 2010
photo by FadderUri (flickr.com)
As someone with a great deal of personal experience working in virtual teams and having managed a collaboration technologies research team for several years, I am very familiar with the obvious as well as subtle problems with the collaboration tools available today. As I am sure you know, there are just way too many tools from which to choose. For this post, I’ll touch on my recent experience with just a few examples of those that provide communications (auditory, visual and data).
Let me start by sharing with you a mental model I have for helping me understand how the many communications technologies available today can be used to optimize project team dynamics:
This model shows the various classes of technologies in decreasing order of the richness of the connection between people. By “richness” I mean the relative amount of information conveyed in the form of auditory, visual, data, and body language cues.
The gold standard for communications is, of course, face-to-face. This is the form we should all use when we must exchange information in the richest and most efficient way possible. While we are face-to-face, we can all easily and intuitively collaborate on documents, draw on a whiteboard or paper, share photos, and use our hands, face and voice to describe and emphasize our ideas. This is also the mode most desirable when sensitive subjects are being discussed (e.g., performance reviews).
Moving down the table, I list technologies that provide facsimiles of the face-to-face visual and auditory experience to a decreasing degree until we reach the bottom with instant and text messaging where no audio or video is used and where the data (text) exchanged is greatly limited. To achieve optimal team performance, everyone on the team must be careful in the selection of the technology used for a given information exchange. For example, it would be insensitive to send a text message to lay someone off. Likewise, you should not call a face-to-face meeting to answer a simple question like, “Did you send that invoice?” A very fast “Yes” sent in an instant message is much better for that.
There is one interesting aspect of these technologies that deserves more discussion: the time element. All of the technologies listed in the table that are marked as “Y” in the real-time column require everyones’ full-time attention for the duration of the connection. Those marked “N” allow each party to respond at a time more convenient to them. One of the biggest killers of team productivity is unnecessary interruptions. Studies have shown that it can take 15-30 minutes for a programmer to get his mind wrapped around his work after an interruption, so limiting them is important. It is at least partially due to the inherent interruption control afforded by the non- “real-time” technologies that make them so useful.
So, now, let’s pick a technology from the table that I’ve been quite pleased with the progress made so far: PC-to-PC voice over IP (VOIP). In particular, Skype. I have recently been helping a colleague on a Web service he is building. We have met a few times face-to-face to whiteboard some ideas, but for the most part, we have used Skype to chat. After a quick check over instant messaging to be sure we are both ready to commit to a real-time connection, we open a voice channel nearly instantly. Then, using the built-in array microphone in my laptop display (a recent addition in laptops). I enjoy a very nearly “being-there” audio experience. No headset, very low delay, and pretty close to full-duplex exchange. I can finally say the audio quality has finally exceeded the old POTS telephone and is way better than a cell phone connection. But, what really impresses me most is that we can have a three-way (or more) conference call with another of our contributors without paying a cent for a conference bridge! In addition, we don’t have to waste time setting up the bridge, dialing a phone, and going through a mess of menu selections to get connected. Fantastic! The only problem we have had with it so far is that my colleague is unable to run Skype on his Linux laptop, because his version of Linux does not support the audio hardware in his computer. So he must chat with me from his backup Windows system. (As an aside, Linux compatibility for most collaborative technologies has been an ongoing issue for as long as I can remember. Most new desktop technologies are developed for Windows first — a much larger market –and much later, if ever, will show up on Linux with a greatly reduced feature set.)
Next time: my latest experiences with desktop sharing.
(Disclaimer: I don’t own any stock nor do I work for Skype. I used this tool as an example of the state-of-the art. It is possible that other manufacturers have similar capabilities).
Announcing New Beta 2 of FreeBusySharing.com
Posted by: Loyal in Uncategorized on January 1st, 2010
We are proud to announce the Beta 2 release of our free/busy calendar sharing service at http://freebusysharing.com. This release adds these features:
* Support for Google, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Office.com calendars;
* Ability to link more than one calendar (e.g., work and personal) and share any of them with others;
* A simple-to-use, on-line scheduling tool that allows you view all of your team members’ availability on one screen and easily find times to meet.
We will continue to add new features to the service in the months ahead. Check it out and give us feedback!
A Great Time to Practice Telecommuting
Posted by: Loyal in Process, Telecommute on June 24th, 2009
photo by gak
We are a week away to a possible BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) strike in the San Francisco area…again. If your people can’t get to work, what will you do? Your competition elsewhere in the world is not encumbered by your particular transportation woes! They will take this opportunity to move ahead of you while you are shutdown because your people struggle to get to the office to man (people?) the phones or work on that critical project.
So, what better time than right now, this week, to practice your emergency plans for business continuity for natural disasters and the like. Surely you have such plans already in place just waiting to be triggered! Well, okay, if you don’t, at least ask as many of those affected by the pending strike to work from home one day this week. See how things go. Fine tune your processes and telecommuting technologies. It is better to be ready to activate your plans or at least be aware of your potential problems than to scramble to keep things together when disaster strikes.
For tips on how to run teams virtually, or how to better work remotely as a telecommuter, check out the rest of this site.
Communicate Effectively with Technology
Posted by: Loyal in Communication, Tools on June 23rd, 2009
The number of technologies we have at our fingertips today to communicate with our virtual project team members is nothing short of daunting. In addition to the most natural and effective method we all know as ” face-to-face,” we have phone (wired and wireless), voicemail, email, instant messaging, blogs, RSS, SMS and Twitter, to name just the big ones. Unfortunately, none of us are taught how to best use these techologies to get our ideas across to each other and to minimize the impact on our colleagues. It is no wonder, then, that we all struggle with them.
The good news is that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out which technology to use when or how to use it properly–it just takes a moment or two of thought Read the rest of this entry »
It's Times Like These…
Posted by: Loyal in Planning, Telecommute on May 3rd, 2009
It is times like these that I wonder why it is that virtual teams and telecommuting are not a standard part of every company’s business continuity plans or, better still, part of the core of the way of doing business. Think about it…if the concerns over the current flu pandemic come true and millions of people get infected or even die, what will you do with your business? Will you send all your people home for a long vacation? Think of your revenue stream. Think of all the phones ringing with nobody to answer them and orders going unfilled. Or, how about those unhappy customers taking their business elsewhere because there was nobody in Product Support to help them fix a problem with your product
Fortunately, there is a relatively easy fix for many businesses: telecommuting. If you don’t already have one, you owe it to your shareholders to setup a telecommuting infractructure and encourage eveyone who can work from home to do so periodically as part of your business continuity strategy. If you have a culture and infrastructure that supports a work-anywhere workforce, you will be able to shut down your company facilities for a short time and your customers may not even notice the change.
It just makes good business sense to be prepared for disaster. The disaster that shuts you down might not be a virus, it might be particularly bad weather, terrorist attack, or a global conflict. Whatever the cause, being able to operate your business with a distributed workforce is prudent.
You can read elsewhere on this site how to get started with telecommuting. Why put it off any longer?
Photo attribution: samantha celera
Announcing a new Free/Busy service
Posted by: Loyal in Telecommute, Tools on April 9th, 2009
We have just finished our first production version of a free-busy sharing service for Outlook users. You can check it out at FreeBusySharing.com. Using this service, you can share your free/busy calendar data with any Outlook user in the world, and they can share their’s with you. You can then use Outlook’s built-in free/busy time viewer to check for times to meet.
If you work for a company running Exchange, you probably use Outlook’s free/busy viewer every day to schedule meetings. This great tool allows you to easily see when your colleagues are free for a meeting. Unfortunately, without great effort, you cannot use this scheduling tool to see free/busy information for people outside your business. With our service, you can easily solve this problem. All you both need is a supported version of Microsoft® Outlook (i.e., 2002, 2003 or 2007).
Once you have completed the setup, you can easily schedule meetings from within your Outlook meeting scheduler. The free and busy times for each invitee should appear in your planning window and look similiar to this (Outlook 2007):
Check it out!
Resolving Disagreements in Virtual Teams
One of the more difficult team dynamics project managers must face from time-to-time is conflict. The ‘conflict’ can be project-related or interpersonal, but either way, strong feelings are often involved, making rational resolutions difficult. For virtual teams where face-to-face time is rare or non-existent, conflict resolution can be especially challenging, even for the highly skilled virtual team manager. Read the rest of this entry »
The Best Thing About Virtual Teams
I was just reading an article offering tips to telecommuters. One suggestion was to stay on your boss’s and coworkers’ good sides. It’s easy to write something that someone takes the wrong way, the article said, and because you don’t see them you don’t know them very well.
