Make a busy team more productive (2)

Submitted by Hugo_Minney on Thu, 12/30/2010 - 12:20

Keywords:

Collaboration is everythingOn the previous page I outlined the problem that I was facing: improving productivity and innovating with an already busy team.

 

I went through each of these tools are at their ability to fulfil our requirements – how expensive are they,what technologies they use and support (do they support smart phones for example), and what features they have. I didn't know exactly what I was looking for the start, so I found I had to go through the list twice, and try out a couple, to work out what would work best.

Scoring system:

Of course we couldn't try out every single product.

first pass through identified a number of results from the Google search which didn't really exist. They automatically scored zero. I also excluded all products that were really only designed for one person rather than a team – after all, the point was to improve collaboration.

 

Single user

No product available

Still in Beta

0

Not strong on collaboration

1-3

Good product for our purposes, if pricey

4

Selected best products to research in depth

5

in the above scoring table, you will see that some scored for, and some scored five. There are a lot of excellent products out there, but some of them come at a price. What do you get this price? Ease of use, ease of setup, extra features that we can't find a use for, and the ability to scale for staff of thousands (which we don't have).

The products.

I sorted these products in order of their attractiveness to us (score, as in table above). One of each type (task manager following GTD methodology, and project management) scores five i.e. we look at it in more detail.

 

Product

Price

Where does it run?

Access in other ways

Notes

Collaborate score

Producteev

$20/month (unlimited users)= $220/yr (£170)

Web

iPhone & Android

Task lists with tags which approximates to projects.  Tendency to become cluttered as every assigned task becomes a separate task and tasks out in the future are also visible

5

Zoho Projects

$99/yr (unlimited users – other options including time tracking and billing also available)

Web

Use a simplified Mobile web interface

Zoho is a powerful suite and Projects is good at getting things done, by highlighting what is dependent on what and keeping status reports.  Doesn’t include tags and context, and may be project centric

5

ActiveCollab

$249 to buy, $99/year after purchase (£150 + £60/yr)

Local server (we’d have to set it up)

We’d have to set this up – not sure

Considered one of the best solutions for collaborative working, but requires technical knowledge to set it up

4

Basecamp

$49/month (unlimited users but only 35 projects) = $600/yr

Web

Various tools, extremely widely supported

Very project centric.  Not easy to tell if it is easy to run multiple projects at once, ie to give a list of to-dos across all projects.  It looks as though we need to work the Basecamp way for best results

4

GetItDoneapp

$39/yr/person; for 20 people $780 = £500

Web

iPhone, Android; Can also collaborate through email

Hides tasks which are not due

4

Nozbe

20 users = €49.95/mo ie €600 (£550) per year

Web

iPhone, Android, paper

Seems to be second best known after Producteev (though that may just depend on the review articles I read).  Very good user interface

5

Gyronix Result Manager for MindManager

$285 per person

Desktop

No

Works with MindManager, which in turn works with Project Management software and allows collaboration

3

Taskmind Web

€12/user/month.  For 20 users = €2,880 (approx. £2500)

Web

Also desktop (Adobe AIR) and iPhone

Projects appear to be an afterthought, and tags are personal.  The web page makes interesting reading though

3

TaskAnyone

$49.90/mo (Checklist+TaskAnyone combo), for 20 users that’s approx. $12,000/ £7,500

Web

Don’t know

Web site not explicit, though collaboration on projects looks like an afterthought

2

Toodledo

Free, more features with Pro $14.95/user/yr (20 users $300 =£200)

Web

Paper (special printed lists), iPhone, Android

Use Folders (like projects), subtasks (hidden within a task to save “busyness” – pro account only), tags, contexts.  Not quite as robust collaboration tools as others

2

Vitalist

$49/yr, for 20 users $1000 £750

Web

iPHone, Smartphone

The standard for GTD, but not strong on collaboration

2

TaskMerlin

$99/yr, id $2000/ £1500

Runs on server

Don’t know

Focussed on capturing tasks.  Not strong on collaboration

1

Voo2do

Free

Web

 

Collaboration features aren’t particularly well developed

1

GoalsOnTrack

single person setting goals. $5/mo

web

Haven’t investigated

Thought to be very good for life goals – includes Vision Boards etc

0

Jello-dashboard.net

Free – Outlook add-in

Works with Outlook

Desktop

Applies GTD principles to Outlook

0

Nirvana

Still in beta

Web

Web interface for smartphone

Still in beta

0

Propel’r

Not available yet

Web

Promises smartphone access

Too many promises, not enough product

0

Remember the Milk

Single person lists – usually free

Web

Smartphone access for Pro account $25

Best known task list product, though it isn’t clear how the collaboration works and it isn’t really designed around a project interface – we need projects

0

So what does this tell you?

  1. there's a lot of choice out there, and choosing the right product for you is fairly subjective
  2. some sites have a really good web pages and marketing, but when you start looking into detail (about an hour later) you find that they have show-stopper limitations
  3. there's a vast gulf between doing "projects" and doing day-to-day business. Nobody seems to address this gulf, and yet I bet that many teams and many businesses work exactly the same way that we do – trying to innovate and create new services whilst also keeping the existing services going.

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