Digging Software Projects

I’m so convinced that Instant Messaging is a great tool that can improve your team productivity and reduce project costs.

20 years ago, if you needed to get an advice from your peer or from your favorite guru, you had to take your phone (leaving your place in some cases) and dial some numbers to get it, wasting time and money.

Time has passed by and now you just have to search that guy on your buddy list of your IM client, type in your keyboard and voilá, it doesn’t matter where in the world are you or where your friend is, the cost is cheaper than phone.

IM services like Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger or (my favorite old one) ICQ have been tools that helped me and all the team members sharing tips, sending documents, discussing project issues, reporting task status and more. The single fact of save me to drive 10 miles for something I can do with an IM client is enough to love it. Like everything in this planet, IM has evolved into an intelligent-weird hard-to-understand specie called Twitter, which allows to do the same with only one thing in mind: To share to the world.

But let’s get back to the point with these questions: What if one of your team distracts from work chatting with friends? What if your team member doesn’t get the objective for having IM in the project? That’s the moment when (for some people) the IM gets the shape of some kind of monster eating team productive time. The Project Manager (or somebody) asks the Internet-communication-LAN-or-whatever manager for denying any IM permission to everybody. Is it fair? I don’t think so.

Project Managers must give IM a chance to be part of the project tools. There are more advantages using IM than not having it. We have to think in an IM-usage strategy establishing some rules and conditions that allows the team to be more productive.

Here are some tips I’ve been using ‘til now:

1) Everybody can use everything on the Internet after 6 o’clock unless we have to do an extra required effort and

2) if someone in the team doesn’t get the idea, he/she will have to pay lunch/pizza for everybody one day.

I hope this can be useful for you.