Filed under: Collaboration and social
Establishing team spaces for projects can be one of the most productive uses of collaboration tools. Projects have a lot of information to share between team members (and beyond), and collaboration can provide new ways of meeting this need.
Projects are also nicely ‘bounded’, with a defined membership (the project team), a clear goal (the project objectives) and a finite lifetime (the length of the project).
With organisations running hundreds of projects, however, these team spaces can still become a problem, particularly if they are left lying around past the end of projects.
A simple rule should therefore be established and enforced: team spaces must be closed when projects end.
Delete team spaces
A team space builds up a huge amount of information over the lifetime of the project, mostly relating to the day-to-day work of the project.
If these spaces are not removed at the end of projects, however, it can rapidly get to the point where the ‘dead outnumber the living’. This clutters up servers, impacts on search, and makes it hard for people to find the information they need.
At the conclusion of each project, or shortly after, team spaces should be deleted as a matter of policy.
[CM Briefing 2008-11, read the full article]