For Part 2 of our tool set blog Outrider has put together a framework for relating the collaboration tools that are available – there are plenty and it can get confusing so hopefully this will help provide a sense for how things hang together especially if you are new to the space.
Firstly please note that although there are many different tools captured above it’s far from an exhaustive list, no inferences should be drawn about a tool that is “missing” other than we didn’t have time to find them all.
As an overarching comment all the tools are focused on promoting communications and the framework should be interpreted in exactly this way, as a snapshot of the remote business communications landscape. More traditional modes of communication like phone, text and email have been included as a benchmark.
Two comparison axes are considered:
1. Complexity: the overall challenge of any communications endeavour increases with the number of parties that need to be involved (particularly in a remote collaboration environment) 2. Synchronicity: it’s also possible to differentiate communications tasks by the level of coordination in the backwards and forwards flow of communication (that the messaging is synchronised in “real time” or not). Many collaboration tools are built to facilitate conversations allowing parties to contribute when convenient rather than “in the moment” hence we have labelled them asynchronous Some comments on what the framework illustrates at a high level:
1. Complexity: the overall challenge of any communications endeavour increases with the number of parties that need to be involved (particularly in a remote collaboration environment) 2. Synchronicity: it’s also possible to differentiate communications tasks by the level of coordination in the backwards and forwards flow of communication (that the messaging is synchronised in “real time” or not). Many collaboration tools are built to facilitate conversations allowing parties to contribute when convenient rather than “in the moment” hence we have labelled them asynchronous Some comments on what the framework illustrates at a high level:
- It's self-evident that many of the toolsets available focus on areas that would have traditionally been handled face to face in an office environment
- There is a proliferation of tools focused on complex multiparty communications (both real time and non-real time), many of these tools are integrated with complimentary solutions to ensure a broader range of communications requirements can be met
- The bottom left hand quadrant is relatively empty; point-to-point asynchronous communications are still heavily reliant on email in a business environment
- Phone and text message substitute tools that have been around for many years but are enjoying renewed interest with current remote working arrangements
- There are well known tools designed to support the establishment of video meetings like Zoom, and
- Complimentary tools designed to promote complex interaction once a video meeting has been set up like Miro
- Next is a range of tools that progressively move towards supporting non real-time communications on an increasing scale of complexity through chat style services, different artefact exchange solutions, project management software and more complex collaboration tools and billboards that allow the aggregation of many discussions and threads in one place