Onnistunut projekti 2016 (Successful Project 2016) – event in Tampere had four workshops with current topics to ponder. First question was:

Projects do not happen without people. How to get everyone involved? To ponder:

• Tools and hands-on collaboration
• Contracts and joint goals
• Steering group

Three different groups went through the question and some common observations were made. I wish to highlight three points that were present in all conversations one way or another.

1. Personal contact

Digitalization has to support and make peoples interactions easier- not replace them. It was interesting to see how strongly this point was seen. Meeting face to face at least in the beginning of the project was considered important. As the project itself goes on, video meetings, chats and project tools make communications easier – but still that first contact and a handshake is needed. I completely agree. Working and creating trust between everyone involved if very difficult, if all communication is done remotely.

2. Tools that are easy to use

The importance of tools was recognized, especially during project change management. The most important benefits were:

• Same rules for everyone
• Invisibility in a project for the entire project team
• Change management
• Real-time monitoring

Use of tools was considered a good, but also a challenging matter. All groups emphasized the same thing: ease of use. Learning new tools shouldn’t take too much time. What was considered easy varied greatly though. The point still being that using or learning new software shouldn’t take up more time than actually performing project tasks.

This is where our own software development is headed. As we balance between usability and necessary features, there might be reason to put more emphasis on usability. We would love to see some comments on this!

3. Information security

Security is taken seriously, as it should be, this was clear in all discussions. The ever tightening security in businesses creates challenges when it comes to projects. Those old shared folders and instant messaging tools are far from secure. Cloud services are one way to go, but the problems still follow. What information is safe to put in cloud and how secure are they? Typically, everything is done by email. Ironically, email is probably the worst when it comes to security. Actual solutions for the problem were not found and the consensus was to use tools that can be used, and most of the time they change between projects. This is clearly something that needs work and has given me a lot to think about. I will come back to this topic later on.