Written by: John Hayes
9/9/2008 12:39 PM

Every major engineering project requires collaboration.  Engineering teams often have to cross disciplines, companies and geographic boundaries to get the job done.  These teams have to come together in a synchronized way that allows orderly progress.  Software developers haven’t missed this opportunity.  They’ve responded with very specific applications, which I call “point solutions” as well as more robust enterprise wide solutions.  What type of application your team needs depends on your objectives.

 

We’ve been very close to this market for a number of years as the providers of an online collaboration tool called Collaboration Suite.  And through our meetings with thousands of engineers, we’ve found that one size definitely does not fit all.   So, in ascending order of complexity, here are a few collaborative tools for the average engineering team;

 

1. Face to face meetings.  Almost no project gets completed without at least some of these.  And the weekly team meeting is still a fixture at virtually every engineering department that I’ve ever visited. 
2. Email and phone calls.  These round out the up-to-date communications between meetings.  And tools like Skype allow you to conference call for free, which is pretty useful if your team gets charged for such things.
3. Web conferencing.  These tools from Webex, Netmeeting, GoToMeeting, etc. allow teams to bridge the geographic gaps so that dispersed project teams work better.  New open-source tools may soon allow for top quality at close to zero cost.
4. Task Managers.  During and between meetings it’s important to know who’s working on what and when they’ll get it done.  Workflow tools like Lotus Notes and PDM/PLM systems have proven very valuable for repetitive small projects.  For larger projects, online project management tools like PrimaVera and Collaboration Suite along with some freeware solutions like DotProject have proven useful. We are working on a free team-based task management tool, but that will be the subject of another entry once we’ve got a few more bugs worked out.
5. Team rooms.  These are online spaces where a team can securely post information to be shared with other members.  The information can take the form of documents, drawings, web pages, links, messages, blogs, etc.  A couple of years ago, Microsoft introduced Sharepoint into this space.  Not everyone in engineering noticed, largely because Sharepoint is more a platform for development than a solution of its own.  However, the idea that people can share unstructured data with a secure group is pretty powerful.
6. PDM tools.  All of the major CAD companies have a PDM tool that supports team-based product design.  Over the past several years, Arena has grown to offer a hosted PDM solution that has garnered a lot of attention.  So far, we don’t see any decent free versions of PDM out there.

 

At ENGINEERING.com we’re constantly on the lookout for applications in this space that we can develop or host and offer to our community at no charge.  Post below or send me an email at jhayes@engineering.com if you know of a specific solution we should look at.

 

Thx

John

Tags: