Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Project Management is Social Software

But with a purpose.

I've been intrigued by the Web 2.0 debate going on in various corners of the web. It's a natual topic for me as my company creates collaborative project management solutions, and much of web 2.0 revolves around being collaborative. Or Social. Or Webified. Or a Rich Internet Application. Or a Smart Client. Or what-do-I-name-this-thing today?

It's getting harder and harder to categorize products because names seem to be coming out of the woodwork. This also means its getting harder and harder to reach out to people with a solution because we may not know how to tag it.

But the odd thing is, its hard to find a more social problem than Project Management. And its even harder to find a Project Management application that is social, webified, smart and rich (and tall, dark and handsome).

So my task at hand is to figure out

a) Workable definitions for all these terms
b) If TeamDirection Project meets the definitions
c) How to spread the word

My strategy is to find every blogger in the social, rich, smart, webified space and let them have a preview of our next version. If they write about it, or better yet, review it, I'll give them a free license. Doesn't have to be positive, it just has to be honest.

We've put alot of our sweat and blood into this product, and we're curious what the opinion shapers of the web have to say. If you're interested in trying the next version of TeamDirection Project out, and have specific interest in Web 2.0, Rich Internet Applications, Webified Applications, Smart Clients, Social Software and Project Management, I believe we have a compelling story for you.

Drop me a line at johnm[at]teamdirection[dot]com.

2 comments:

Online Degree said...

John:

I've just started looking for a project management software solution. My biggest concern is having it run on a Mac. 85% of my team uses a Mac. From your blog, it sounded like TeamDirection is an Internet application, so I'm hopeful that it may work through Safari or FireFox. I did take a quick look at your site though and it looks like it may require SharePoint or Groove. I'm not familiar with these products but they both look rather Microsoft driven. Are these required or can TeamDirection run on its own?

Although it may be against your best interest to share, if TeamDirection won't run on a Mac, are there other software solutions you would recommend? You seem to be very knowledgeable about project management software.

A couple others I've looked at so far are Basecamp (Basecamp.com), which seems to be a simplified web-based collaboration tool and could work nicely for us. And, AtTask (attask.com), which seems to be really feature rich project management package. I'm just not sure on pricing yet. Anyway, if there are any you recommend, let me know. I've just started looking and will be researching for a while.

Thanks. I look forward to your reply.

Online Degree said...

John:

I've just started looking for a project management software solution. My biggest concern is having it run on a Mac. 85% of my team uses a Mac. From your blog, it sounded like TeamDirection is an Internet application, so I'm hopeful that it may work through Safari or FireFox. I did take a quick look at your site though and it looks like it may require SharePoint or Groove. I'm not familiar with these products but they both look rather Microsoft driven. Are these required or can TeamDirection run on its own?

Although it may be against your best interest to share, if TeamDirection won't run on a Mac, are there other software solutions you would recommend? You seem to be very knowledgeable about project management software.

A couple others I've looked at so far are Basecamp (Basecamp.com), which seems to be a simplified web-based collaboration tool and could work nicely for us. And, AtTask (attask.com), which seems to be really feature rich project management package. I'm just not sure on pricing yet. Anyway, if there are any you recommend, let me know. I've just started looking and will be researching for a while.

Thanks. I look forward to your reply.