As PPM methodologies spread throughout organizations, the greatest challenge facing business leaders is a lack of voluntary team member participation in the project management process. Taking a traditional top-down or command-and-control project management approach doesn’t work with today’s workforce, resulting in:
- Project information that executives don’t trust
- An overly structured management environment that people dislike
- Frustrated project teams whose accomplishments often go unrecognized
This week, at the @task User Conference held in Salt Lake City, we announced @task Stream™—the first social project management platform. Combining the power of social networking with the structure of project management, @task provides more relevant information and clearer visibility into business initiatives, enabling better-informed and proactive decision-making.
We recognized that there were a number of reasons people are drawn to social networking generally, including 1) it’s easy to use, 2) people receive positive feedback and recognition from their network of friends, and 3) people can share conversational information about what they are doing with their friends. Stream facilitates greater voluntary team participation by:
- Empowering the Front Line: The people closer to the work understand it best. Stream gets teams more involved in project plans and promotes greater individual ownership over priorities and commitments. The people working in project teams make public commitments, take ownership, and prioritize their work.
- Capturing the Real Story: The most significant factor to improving data accuracy is capturing more qualitative information, providing frequent and more descriptive updates delivers greater visibility and richer understanding of the real story. Qualitative information flowing upward in organizations gives managers and executives the ability to follow conversations on relevant initiatives.
- Recognize Accomplishments: People, not technology, ensure project success. Stream’s focus on people fosters discussion, highlights accomplishments, and keeps everyone engaged. People receive recognition for accomplishments and comment on other’s work and accomplishments.
Stream enables a transparent environment where everyone’s work contributions are visible to peers and managers—providing business leaders a more accurate pulse of what’s going on within their business. Unlike other solutions that take a top-down, command-and-control approach to managing work throughout the enterprise, we understand that it’s really people that are the key to project success. @task facilitates collaboration, innovation, and efficiency by addressing the needs of everyone involved in the work management process—starting at the front lines.
I like the story that @Task has new functionality that leverages the power of social networking. Here is the challenge that we need to creatively resolve. The business likes to have robust project management in place but find existing tools (@Task not included) cumbersome to use and consequently attempt to do project mgmt via email (which does not scale). Can you integrate @Task with Outlook (email program) so that your story on social networking resonates even more? It should also track non-work time that was spent on social networking sites; we could then use it to rationalize employee’s productivity (not anonymously, but via opt-in). Those who choose not to opt-in will have to separately demonstrate that they are delivering value for the business. I favor measure and manage (via user opt-in) while having fun (with your social network).
Is there an integration between @Task and Sharepoint?
Ramu, @task offers a number of integrations via APIs, including Outlook. You can read more about integrations with @task http://bit.ly/cXYggU.
I did not get the objective of this platform. Can somebody elaborate the objectives.
Philips Tharakan, thanks for contributing to the blog. One of the primary objectives of the new platform is to make it easier for team members and individual contributors to participate in the project management process. An engaged workforce facilitates the capture of accurate and timely information for well-informed decision making. You can learn more about stream by visiting http://www.attask.com/stream.
Okay, THIS is fabulously exciting!! I’m very interested to see how this unfolds. Will you be publishing feedback as users get on the bandwagon, Ty? I’ll understand if that needs to be kept in-house but it would be wonderful to let us know how @task Stream works out.
Geoff, We’re all very excited about it too. My plan is to keep everyone up to date here. In fact, sometime next week the live demo of the functionality that was presented at our User Conference will be available, at which time I’ll reach out to you and go through it all with you, if you’d like. I think this is a real game-changer.
Hi, I have a business requirement for Integration of @Task and Sharepoint 2010.
Just wondering, how the data is getting saved @task end and in which format.
Very appreciated, for any help here.
Mark.
Mark,
How can we contact you and I’ll put you in touch with one of our technical people who can help you with that.