Why online collaboration is important for agile teams

Nowadays more and more companies are trying to implement online collaboration into their projects, and here we are going to discuss the reasons why collaborative tools are so in-demand among all sorts of companies and how to use these tools in the right way in order to get great results.

First of all, let’s try to define “target audience” that might want to use online collaborative tools. That would include: groups of individuals or several teams working on the same project; distant team members who need to communicate in real-time and share information on the project; and clients that want to keep their projects under control. The purpose of online collaboration is enabling team members working together and bringing more creativity into the process. Online collaboration solutions are also perfect for the companies that don’t have enough working space for bringing all the employees so they could discuss project’s issues face to face.

Real-time collaboration is crucial for companies that follow agile methodology while managing their projects, and there is a reason for that. Since agile promotes itself as a method that takes into consideration the interests of all the stakeholders in the project – clients, project managers and their teams – it’s important to bring in visibility into the process and create opportunities for free communication between all the participants of the process. And online collaboration solutions allow just that.

Now let’s take a closer look at how all the parties involved in the project can benefit from using online collaboration software.

For managers such solutions mean first of all less paperwork and less time spent on arranging meetings with employees and explaining the same task over and over again. Using work management software with built-in collaboration features managers can send tasks to the assigned employee and attach detailed explanations or necessary documentation right to the task. In agile projects such feature is especially important since it allows saving time; having all the needed information attached to the assignment employee can start the next task right away without having to consult project manager and ask for specifications.

As it was previously said online collaboration solutions bring in perfect transparency into the project allowing clients to track the process and quickly make changes in the priorities if necessary. Having constant access to relevant statistics and numbers is crucial since it enables responding to the changes on the market or to unexpected moves of competitors.

Teams benefit from using these solutions because they usually have short learning curve and are quite easy to operate. Thanks to the special communicative features that allow creating discussions within the system team members can collaborate in solving complex tasks, share all types of media files and post links to useful info online.

Overall, what you should know about collaborative workflow management software is that it not only allows managing routine tasks with fewer efforts, but it also brings in three factors that are so important for any agile project: simplicity, efficiency and engagement.