Will running a project better with a project forum?

Question

When we run a project, we feel terrible to communicate with different departments through email? does anyone have any experience to communicate with different departments through a forum? therefore, the project status will be more clear for everyone.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

Eric

Answer 1

We use microsoft office Sharepoint Server (Moss) (the high end brother of Microsoft sharepoint Services which would do the trick as well but much cheaper). It allows us to setup a dedicated (and private) website for each project. We can also setup project mailinglists, deadlines, ... and share documents privately and in a secured way.

I personally like the possibiltiy to post small announcements, which is a great way to motivate people (think "if we can do this before the end of this week, then ....") or to announce newsflashes ("sales are up by ...").

Our experiences are that it's a great tool to increase communication and lower the amounts of e-mails send around. We have also noticed people tend to think and act more like a team. Downside is that people tend to play with this "tool" and that is not exactly usefull.

about us: we work with many projects, each project requires extensive collaboration among people from various sites and various companies.

We use the same for departmentwebsites but then we don't use the newsannouncements (it was abused to post non work related news).

Answer 2

We typically schedule regular conference calls to discuss projects.  The "owner" of the project should schedule the call on a regular basis, provide an agenda for each call, and then manage the discussion on the call so the time is used productively.

This provides for "real-time" discussion of the key aspects of the project. In between calls regular email communication can be used to follow-up and track action items.

This balances the best of email and real-time communication.  If everyone is in the same building instead of a phone call you could have a meeting, but in my case people are in difference locations and a conference call is the best way to handle these projects.