Is your project team ready for web 2.0 ?

Now don't take this blog the wrong way, I am a big supporter of the things web 2.0 can bring to teams working together, but before you launch your team on a web 2.0 collaborative fest, make sure that you have enabled them with the right tools and training. Below are a couple of pointers that should help you to prepare your teams :-

Make sure that everyone in your teams can access the tools you want to use

Many web 2.0 tools assume quite a high level of browser and machine specification before you can even logon, if any members of your team do not have at least the minimum that is required this will lead to them not contributing to the project and you will lose one of the benefits of web 2.0 – democratisation of the means of publication.

So why might someone not have this capability ? It could be economic (they can't afford to upgrade), it could be they are on a locked platform (they have an machine build supplied by the IT department that they can't upgrade) or they could just be unlucky and have a rouge machine which does not want to play web 2.0 (I am sure they exist!!). Whatever it is you need to make sure that everyone in the team can access the software.

Make sure that everyone in your teams can use the tools you want them to use

Many web 2.0 tools assume quite a high level of "web savvy-ness" before you can utilise all of the "cool" and "useful" features. If you assume that just because you have a passion for these new collaborative ways of working that everyone in the team will have the same approach – you will be disappointed.

Some will need one to one coaching to help them to understand the benefits that the new technologies can bring to them and the team as a whole. Again without this you have not opened up the means of publication. You should also take into account the pride of the people who are being engaged in your teams, many will have worked in other ways for many years and will not admit that they do not understand this new way of working. Therefore I would recommend that you always budget an amount of time for face to face training, which might seem a bit backwards for a tool to enable distributed collaboration, but my experience is that this can pay dividends in the wholesale adoption of web 2.0 tools.