[Design] [Scooby] Feedback on real-time collaboration tool

[Ashkan Soltani]

Thinkfree might be worthwhile to checkout as well.  They're going  
after the same market

http://www.thinkfree.com

-a


On Jul 6, 2006, at 1:27 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:

> I think the only hurdle for me was performance. I already had a  
> gmail account, which I use regularly, so setting up an account  
> wasn't a blocker for me.
>
> You're right that we didn't all need read-write access.
>
> This might be good to try out for the competitive analysis  
> spreadsheet.
>
> Thx,
> Mimi
>
> On Jul 5, 2006, at 10:17 AM, Priscilla Chung wrote:
>
>> Last Wednesday the Scooby team decided to test out the  
>> collaboration spreadsheet tool that's still in beta by Google (Labs).
>>
>> http://www.spreadsheets.google.com
>>
>> I'm sending this e-mail to document and to hear from those who  
>> participated, feedback on how this particular collaboration tool  
>> worked, what didn't work and what we can learn from this tool.
>>
>> Since this was a bit of an experiment in learning and seeking out  
>> new tools in working collaboratively, there was a bit of confusion  
>> on the original invitation list and who was to participate. My  
>> intention was not to leave people in the dark, but to just try  
>> something out with a small group of people and if it worked, the  
>> team could decide if it would be worthwhile to incorporate this  
>> tool for part of project planning.
>>
>> Just to update, we continued working on the planning for Scooby  
>> 0.3  (without the spreadsheet tool) in place of the status meeting  
>> last Thursday. Please see attached for the latest version of the  
>> feature ranking matrix. The Scooby 0.3 FRM will also be documented  
>> and updated on the wiki. For more details see: http:// 
>> wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Projects/ScoobyZeroDotThree
>>
>> What is a this 'feature ranking matrix' (FRM)?
>> This is a spreadsheet that helps Product/Program/Design (PPD) team  
>> decide on priorities based on target user's needs and Engineering  
>> to estimate (SWAG) how long it will take to implement the  
>> features. Once both teams have entered in their data, it helps  
>> determine the priorities for that particular release. See attached  
>> for FRM example.
>>
>> In regards to the spreadsheet, here is some feedback I captured:
>>
>> Negatives:
>> + Only two people sent me their Gmail address as requested from  
>> the original invite and with the confusion of people who wanted to  
>> participate in the meeting, it took an additional 15 mins to have  
>> everyone in the same chat room viewing the spreadsheet and to get  
>> over the chaos/excitement (because this was a new) and move  
>> forward with the task at hand.
>>
>> + In addition to the chaos, I rushed in adding everyone with read/ 
>> write access and that was a big mistake on my part. People were  
>> making changes to the spreadsheet, mainly because it was 'new' and  
>> 'cool' to see changes made on the fly and everyone else could see  
>> as well. So in some ways this point is a positive because people  
>> were really excited to be able collaborate in this way.
>>
>> + The tool is clearly still in beta. There were bugs in the tool  
>> and some of the guests had refresh problems on different browsers  
>> etc, and then there were limits to how many people could  
>> participate. It was clear to all of us who participated that this  
>> tool is still in beta.
>>
>> + Adding an extra tool to the process means making sure everyone  
>> also has an account and it is yet another hurdle for everyone who  
>> need an account just to follow along. When working with a small  
>> group ie. the Scooby team it was not as difficult, though if it  
>> were for the Chandler team, it might have been more difficult to  
>> have everyone on board.
>>
>> Positives:
>> + The real-time interactivity was very 'cool' and people were  
>> really excited to be able collaborate in this way.
>>
>> + The chat feature is great. We chatted on IRC mainly so we could  
>> archive our chat in case we needed to refer back to what decisions  
>> were made. Perhaps if there was a file to 'download' your  
>> conversation, that would be ideal for our purposes.
>>
>> + Everyone was on the same page when going through the document.  
>> Made it really easy for people to follow along, and to stop off- 
>> topic conversations (the cross town bus analogy.)
>>
>> What I learned:
>> + To give certain people read/write and other people read only  
>> access. When I originally thought of how things could work,   
>> everyone could put in their SWAG for the line item, we'd still  
>> follow the same methodology to go through each line item one by one.
>>
>> Perhaps if the users are used to understanding of what the task  
>> is, could there be a way where I would just hand over the  
>> spreadsheet and ask everyone to enter in the SWAGs? This way I  
>> could  work on other things, keep the window open and if they had  
>> questions or finish they could just ping me. This collaboration  
>> tool could introduce new ways to work, perhaps more efficiently or  
>> does one really need to go through each feature line item by line  
>> item? Would it cause more confusion in the end? I  don't know.  
>> This is just a thought after using this tool.
>>
>> I leave the decision to the team to see if we should use this tool  
>> again for planning Scooby 0.4 in a couple of months from now. I  
>> would also love to hear feedback from everyone who took part  to  
>> add their thoughts about the tool if I left out anything, etc.
>>
>> Thanks, -Priscilla
>>
>> <zeroDot3FRMv2.xls>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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