Project Management in the Cloud

The Internet age is enabling forms of business and business management which were never before possible.  Entire online industries have sprung up to take advantage of the immense talent pool available online.  Of course, anything open to the public suffers from how not everyone out there is on your side - with severe cases of inaccuracy and vandalism sabotaging collaborative projects.

Which is why your business can choose to adopt only those parts of web 2.0 which suit you: instead of leaving yourself vulnerable to vandalism, you cancrowdsource among the team of professionals you’ve already vetted and hired.  Internal crowdsourcing can set up incredibly effective cross-communication channels, letting your staff work together and bolster each other’s efforts without requiring your constant intervention - even when employees are scattered across the globe.

“Wiki“s, miniature wikipedia-a-likes focused on certain tasks, have become enormously popular over the last year - with wikis based on everything from theiPhone to Transformers toys, but yours can be much more productive.  Building a work-based wiki is an investment which pays back every day: with the application of a few simple web-based task management tools, your staff can invest time once to create a permanent training, reference and standardization resource.  Never again will busy employees have to waste half the day explaining the ropes to new faces - because the last time they did it, they literally wrote the book.  The online, instantly searchable and available anywhere, book.

So what are your options?

1.  The Free Wiki

The whole point of the wikipedia foundation is that everything be open to everyone, always.  The MediaWiki software which powers Wikipedia is open source, available for download and install here.  There are an assortment of guides for configuring your own personal repository of knowledge, a good one from Lifehacker is available here.  You end up running a server with some simple project management tools, ready to start the real work.

Because building an encyclopedia is kind of a big deal, and it’s the sort of project where management and maintenance aren’t minor tasks - major wikis employ full-time staff to patrol the pages and keep everything linked and running smoothly.  In this electronic age, with any number of extras promising to make your life simpler if you’ll only adopt them, it’s important to keep track of the real pros and cons.

2.  The Paid (and Supported) Wiki

The other option is to approach it like a real online project manager - outsourcing the grunt-work to professionals, leaving your own team free to do their actual jobs.  Internet-obsessed fans might enjoy the power of administering every last detail of their digital pages, but an online project manager wants their web-based task tools to work - leaving them free to do their work!

One option suitable for project managers is a Qtask-supported Wiki where the setup and details are taken care of by a 24/7 staff, leaving your team free to provide content and get on with your actual jobs.  Remember, a properly-applied wiki improves productivity instead of replacing it.  An added advantage is how this particular Wiki does not stand alone - it’s intended to support your project management, and is integrated with an array of web-based task tools to ease administration of your projects without requiring you to spend a week setting everything up.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, your choice will be determined largely by your resources. While a “free” Wiki does not cost any dollars, the time to setup and maintain the software can be prohibitive. Do you use a Wiki or Wiki-like solution to collaborate? We would love to hear about your solutions.