The Collaboration Tax
February 15th, 2008 by John Reeve
One of the key components to any web-based project management service is collaboration. Does the service reduce barriers to participation and facilitate collaboration? Whether or not a service touts it, collaboration among team members has to be addressed as part of the worfkow.
We’ve interpreted the team dynamic into Intervals in several ways. Most importantly, we’ve priced Intervals by project. It is essential to have the ability to add and remove users easily without being hindered by extra charges; something we call the collaboration tax. The last thing you want as a manager is to keep your creative director or your HTML pro from contributing to a project because of extra charges. Once your project is up and running, you should be able to see it end-to-end without unnecessary interruption.
Inside the application itself, Intervals facilitates collaboration through task histories and notes, project notes, document sharing, email notifications, timers, and other relevant functionality woven into the project management workflow. Intervals helps the user participate as they track time and tasks, as their comments and efforts become woven into the project for other members to review.
If collaboration is important to your small business, make sure you take into consideration your team’s needs when evaluating a web-based service. Ask yourself these questions: Will I be taxed for adding more users at a crucial moment during the project? Does the service enable my team to work more efficiently?
Tags: collaboration
