Team Collaboration made easy using Collaboration templates
written by: gnashrad71
Most of the major projects taken up by big organizations fail to achieve the required objectives due to poor team collaboration. As the project team members are stationed at different corners of the globe, organizations find it extremely difficult to co-ordinate the efforts of their team members. In spite of the best efforts taken by the project co-coordinators, the teams don’t have a professional environment to sink their efforts. This is where the role of Collaboration templates comes in to the picture.
Objectives of the Collaboration template
The objective of the team collaboration template is to provide a standard platform for all the members in the team to
1. Share the knowledge and ideas with each other
2. Effectively communicate and co-ordinate the activities done by the team members belonging to different groups.
3. Bring in uniformity in the way the different groups work.
Different Applications of Collaboration templates
Collaboration templates can be used by the team members to perform a variety of tasks including
1. Validating the ideas that are presented by the different members of the team, including those related to start up ideas
2. Brain storming and creating a business model
3. Actionable templates that would contain the different actionable items
Idea Validation Collaboration templates
When two or more young entrepreneurs want to start a business, the first thing that needs to be decided is the type of business to venture it. Different members in the start up team might be having different ideas. In order to validate the ideas put forward by the different team members and take the start up to the next stage of finalizing the business model, Validation board template created by leanstartupmachine would definitely come in handy. This board (http://leanstartupmachine.com/validationboard/)
would test the ideas put forward by the different members and then finally come out with the outcome required to go to the next stage. Many modern enterprises have seen significant cost reductions by using this validation board.
Creating a Business Model
This is another important step in creating a successful business enterprise. While creating the Business model, the different stake holders can design their own business model and share across the team by using collaboration template. One such Collaboration tool available in the market place is the Business model canvas created by Business Model Foundry (http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas). The canvas contains all the necessary sections related to creating a working business model including Customer segments, Value propositions, Revenue Streams, Cost Structure, Key resources and Key Partners.
Action items to get started
After creating the business model, the next immediate step is to get in to action. In this stage, the team needs to drill down to the specific actionable items and a schedule for completing the various action items. Milestones would also be defined during this stage. Collaboration template created by collaboration king (http://collaborationking.com/collaboration-capital-tools/2010/5/19/action-templates-for-better-collaboration.html) would help the team to arrive at the action items, corresponding milestone and the planned duration for achieving the milestone. In addition to PowerPoint templates, Collaboration King has also designed graphical templates and white board templates.
By using these templates, team members can share their ideas and knowledge between them, which would eventually lead to achieving their desired objectives.
validation board
http://leanstartupmachine.com/validationboard/
business model canvas
http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas
brooking template
http://collaborationking.com/collaboration-capital-tools/2010/5/19/action-templates-for-better-collaboration.html
Articles on value of templates
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3252-the-business-intelligence-scorecard
http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2012/10/kill-your-business-model-befor.html
