As part of Project X Ltd's RapidBI platform and approach, we heavily rely on repeatable processes and infrastructure.
In doing a post project review, one of the areas that I saw that is difficult to ensure through the collaboration model is understanding. We use a variety of platforms for sharing, but none of these platforms ensure understanding.
This is where collocation and repetition are key. During a big project, I had on my whiteboard by my office a picture of the end to end architecture of our solution so that people could come by and see it. This certainly helped, but I was always surprised to see how little people often understood.
This is where we need to go back to the 101 of learning and remember that people have various ways that they learn. This is also true on communication and collaboration. We have so many tools and methods available to us, often we forget that not one size fits all. Some people love MS Project, others excel and maybe even a napkin, but this is only one view and leads to paralysis on working the work breakdown structure versus doing the work.
I was reminded again of this when we called a stop the spinning meeting and our client asked if we could go back to a collaboration method that others understood, but not the new leaders of the initiative. And boom, the team starting gelling again.
