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Journal for taskade0
Journal for taskade0
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“If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.â€
—Alan Cooper, Programmer and Software Designer
1. Siloed Workflows
We’ve discussed siloed workflows many times in the past, most recently in our article on Building a Second Brain (BASB). It’s a fairly common theme across teams and organizations that use many different documentation, collaboration and communication tools.
Here’s when it becomes a problem:
Arbitrary choice of tools and platforms
No real-time collaborative document editing
Combining local and cloud storage
A lack of team-wide single source of truth (SSOT)
No communication standards (email, video, calls, chat)
When remote employees work in siloes, there’s very little spontaneous, organic collaboration. And you can’t expect productivity to soar when people have no incentive or opportunity to tag team.
2. Tools vs. Workflows
What’s the best workflow? Well, everyone knows it’s the one that comes with a new tool.
After all, when the company strikes a stellar deal on a new piece of software, it’s only natural to rebuild your team’s entire workflow to match, right?
Except, it doesn’t make much sense. [URL=https://www.taskade.com/templates]https://www.taskade.com/templates[/URL]
The truth is, the best (read: useful) remote collaboration tools are the ones that create synergy with existing workflows. You should only consider an upgrade if the new solution:
Is equally or more intuitive to use
Can merge with established workflows
Offers *reasonable* customization
Brings in substantial improvements
3. Impaired Team Communication
This one’s almost a cliche in our articles, but effective communication is *the* thing in distributed organizations. Whether it’s local branches of a company or a workforce spread all over the globe, every business dynamic always starts with a sender/recipient relation.
But effective communication isn’t a walk in the park.
Most communication apps are like walled gardens
There’s no smooth transition between multiple channels
Communication and collaboration happen in separate lanes
Alternating between channels means shuffling tabs and apps
Limping team communication isn’t just a productivity killer. In the long run, it can lead to small misunderstandings which are a stone’s throw away from team conflict.
4. Lack of Attention to User Preferences ??
Teamwork, camaraderie, companionship… It seems there’s nothing more important than making *teams* feel all warm and fuzzy. But in that merry back-patting festival, many collaboration tools ten completely overlook *user* preferences.
Here’s what most collaboration platforms get wrong:
Workflows are customizable but only on a global scale
There’s no incentive for individuals to explore pet-projects
You can’t unplug from team activities to tackle deep work
Effective project management requires a coordinated effort of all team members. And that means individuals should feel empowered and be able to contribute to the collective team effort in a meaningful way.
5. Clunky and Unintuitive UIs ??
“The next big thing is the one that makes the last big thing usable.â€
—Blake Ross, Co-creator of Mozilla Firefox
Does navigating your project management software feels like a tour around the USS Enterprise? Here’s the thing: Unless we’re talking about highly specialized software made for power users, over-engineering collaboration apps is a terrible idea.
We don’t like:
Reinventing the wheel
Shiny features nobody wants to use
Prioritizing eye candy over usability
Unintuitive and distracting navigation
Remote collaboration tools are used across organizations. That’s why they should be accessible to all types of users, regardless of technical proficiency.
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