Imagine a world without emails !!!!!!!!!!!!

The fact of organisational commitment and investment required for an email server or to host in a remote server are considered to be a constant. With every other thing frozen as a constant, let’s try to analyse if emails have been a boon or bane to the workplace.

Effective communication is a key to the success of a project. With the advancements in technology, there is more and more reliance on electronic communication. It assists project managers in mass communication of information among the team. Tools such as MS outlook are becoming a synonym of email. Such tools have been developed with user friendly features such as calendar sharing, marking the importance of the message, booking resources, reoccurring meetings.

Advancement in technology and move of organisation towards a cost optimisation has lead to the rise of outsourcing of work and formation of virtual project teams. Spread apart and across the globe the employees function as a team. The key flavour to the increase in this type of work culture is the increase reliance towards electronic communication. It breaks thru the barriers of time difference in different parts of the world, enables immediate communication of information to any where in the world and avoids the need for time consuming costly face-to-face meetings. 

Emails have become part of every day’s, work, this over reliance on technology, is this good or bad. Emails help in validation of source of information and as a tool to maintain an audit trail. 

Audit Trail !!!

Research has shown that, “Emails addiction” is one of the most stressful and challenging task for a manager to handle, both personally and of their team. Electronic communication has hindered the need for face-to-face communication. This could have a negative impact, such as, that it deteriorates the growth of interpersonal skills.

As a Project Manager or Manager, it is important to balance the communication among your team. Moving forward into this challenging world, it is best to identify stakeholder, team and project need and define a particular mode of communication as part of the project communication plan.

 In my opinion, emails could be used for communicate and share project information. However for personal and when making decision, with impact to the project, face-to-face communication is better.

 ** In near future I expect to write about use of mobile devices for emails and about effect of email spam**

Snapfish, proudly hosted by Hewlett Packard, is a photo sharing Web2.0 application. This application is backed by its simplicity and efficiency in ease of use to customers.

www.snapfish.com.au

Once the images are loaded the application, Snapfish, offers sharing services enabling user to forward invitation to view their album either via an email or a MMS.

The application also provides users with the option to order print of either selected photos or as a complete album. The step-by- step ordering process at Snapfish is very simple. In my opinion anyone, computer novice or pro, will be able to upload and order pictures easily.

This Web2.0 application offers bundled service such as uploading videos and digital photographs. The photos can be uploaded with Tag like any other Web2.0 application.

Snapfish stands apart from its other similar application in the fact that the photos are not available for public view. The user has the option/authority to invite selected viewer to their album.

Having worked in the advertising industry, from a business perspective, it is a good application to share photos without loss of organisational server space.

More than for professional users this application is more suited for personal use to share photos among friends and families.

In my opinion, Snapfish as a photo storage application bundled with additional services of photo print and gifts is a boon to advancement in technology.

This forum, like any other forum, has been structured with the concept of users add value. The users are integrated into the content creation process thereby adding value to the process and result.

http://forum.homeone.com.au/

 The company maintaining the platform does not provide the data, only the facility for publishing and sharing. As a Web2.0 application it has the folksonomies of tagging or keywords or Meta data, assisting linked serach.

Home One

Using the data provided by the users, the providers of the Web2.0 application can harness collective intelligence – wisdom of the crowd or aggregated knowledge. This enables Homeone to be an overall knowledge pool of the every facet of the home building process.

 The best part of this is that the users do not need a high level of technical knowledge or be experts of the web. The users can read information in forum without a username or password. The validity of the input from users is monitored by the log-in authorisation. The users need a username and password only if they wish to post a forum. This is filled with forum topics with queries which create an overall knowledge library of home building.

 The forum entries are sorted based on the category and date of posting. The default forum provides a simple and intuitive structure coupled with an efficient interface. The users use the forum as a tool for storing and sharing valuable information.

 This Web2.0 application has threads of conversations and leads to more sharing of information. Homeone has achieved its original goal to assist research, fuel ideas and conversations about Australian home building. The main challenge in the future of this Web2.0 application will be to maintain its essential attributes of trust, openness, voluntariness and self organisation. In my personal opinion, having worked in the building industry, it is a big tick and thumbs up for the knowledge base of Homeone.

 Web 2.0 is the use of technology and web design that aims to design website based on creativity. Such an application enables sharing of information and ability to collaborate other users of the website. Social- Networking seems to have been a start to the Web2.0 world. It has led to the development and evolution of communities and hosted services such as Orkut. (www.orkut.com)

  Orkut is a social networking service, one of the first Web2.0 application, developed by Google. Google released this in 2004 and targeted Orkut towards United States. It was designed to assist web users in meeting new friends and maintaining online or existing relationships.

      Web2.0 refers to the second generation of internet based services and users. Orkut, a Web2.0 application, is an infrastructure of people being able to communicate quickly and easily without having technical knowledge. Orkut assists in creating relationship and connection of individuals sharing ideas and building relationship.

 Since 2006, this Web2.0 application has permitted users to create account without an invitation. Even though it has not become very popular among professionals in United States and Canada, it has become a unique space for teenagers and college communities to stay connected.

 The application holds variety of functionalities such as host for photographs, online communities, user profile, area zoning. Even though Orkut did not achieve its initial objective of attracting professionals its functionality of networking has become a major hit among younger generations.

In my opinion, from a business oriented approach, Web2.0 applications such as Orkut could be utilised better for business networking!.

Data Compiled by VelProjM

Source : Project Management Institute (PMI)

Project Management Lifecycle -

• Project Initiation
• Project Planning
• Project Execution
• Project Monitoring & Control
• Project Closure