As a software company we often work on projects with many different parties. Below is a real world example of a recent project which demonstrates how Glasnost can be used to bring everyone together and generate deep, productive collaboration.
A client was looking to do a major revamp of their corporate marketing site, involving a significant re-working of their brand, including a new strapline to use with their logo.
So the project team consisted of:
1. Us
2. The client
3. A design agency
4. A copywriter
5. A marketing consultant
Now various members of our team are based in Surrey, Sussex and London, the client is based in London (but in offices in both the West End and the City), the marketing consultant is based in Manchester, the design agency and copywriter in Oxford.
That’s 10 people in 7 locations. Without some software help all of us could have spent hours and hours flitting between all these locations, at considerable expense.
This is where Glasnost comes in:
1. All the project team were set up on Glasnost.
2. All the company and contact details were added in to the Contact Management Module.
3. A new project was set up and all the parties linked in.
4. A new image gallery was set up, and all parties given access.
5. The gallery was linked to the project and the project linked to all the relevant companies.
With this in place (which took just a few minutes) we were ready to go !
The brief was uploaded, consisting of a Word doc and various jpeg’s.
Thereafter further documents, tasks and comments were added to Glasnost and assigned to the relevant parties, so everyone always knew what they had to do. In addition by clicking on ‘All’ everyone could also see what everyone else had to do.
Every time a comment or task was added or edited all the appropriate people were alerted by email.
Altogether 16 documents were uploaded, four of them in multiple version, 28 tasks were added and completed, 52 images were added and commented on and 64 comments were exchanged.
Add a number of Skype sessions into the mix and that was pretty much all that was needed. We did meet up a couple of times in person, but largely for social reasons. It wasn’t necessary but was fun.
Open and transparent access to everything everyone needed to know made the whole process simple to manage and hugely productive.
Their new site is now live. Any updates will be handled through Glasnost as it contains a complete record of all the correspondence, documents and images that were used in the development process. Rather than 10 individuals in 5 companies each keeping a record of their part of the jigsaw, with no one having the whole thing, it’s now all in one place, with access for all.
It’s on Glasnost…
Antony
