A bit of background...
For about 2 years we’ve used a collaboration software product for both internal and external means of communication. Internally we use it for lunch recommendations, ideas, or share thoughts and links to something interesting we’ve read in regards to our industry. But more importantly we use it as a communication tool with our clients during a project. Regardless of the size of a project that we work on, it is ALWAYS complex. We are using software to solve our client’s problems – if we haven’t asked you a million questions (we apologize if that’s sometime what it feels like) we’re not doing it right.
At the start of every project we do requirements gathering and a gap analysis. This provides us with a sense of the necessary functionality and overall project scope but it’s far away from final. As we work our agile process (you can read more about it here) we are continuously communicating with our clients on everything from high-level priorities to basic usage application. As a result, we use our collaboration software to trap absolutely everything and it has become a huge component of our day-to-day operations.
The problem
When we got the notice that the service provider was shutting down this solution to focus on a new venture – we panicked. We researched countless other providers in collaboration, messaging and communications but to our surprise very few solutions organized conversations into rooms and topics.
Here’s a use case. We create rooms, or “chat’s” for each client. Users only have access to the rooms they are invited to. Now imagine having only one room where every question, regarding anything and everything, and is used by up to 10 or more members. Within a day you’ll have a huge disorganized thread where comments looses its context and it’d be virtually impossible to go back weeks, or even days, later to reference the conversation.
We need topics. A conversation relating to dashboard settings should not be mixed with document linking or data import.
Our solution
As we did our research on replacement products, we were disappointed with the results. We came to the conclusion to add it as a Plugin into DECK DecisionWare. We knew exactly what worked well for us and this provided the perfect opportunity to add and extend the things that we wished worked better. DECK DecisionWare provides us with all the core pieces of functionality and this was the ultimate test of how quickly we could turn up a new product.
We dedicated 4 resources to DECK Collaboration and after two days we had a working version. It didn’t include all the bells and whistles and it had a few defects but that is still, by far, the fastest product, or DECK DecisionWare Plugin, we’ve developed.
We are now, a few weeks later, fixing the defects and adding on functionality as we split our time between client project and DECK Collaboration. Early next week we’ll be on-boarding our customer’s and we’ll be adding DECK Collaboration to the suite of Plugin’s that help organizations engage their internal and external stakeholders.
Solve your problem today!
Are you stuck with an old legacy piece of software that you wish could do more for you? Or perhaps your software product is being end-of-life’d and you have a hard time finding a suitable replacement – just like in our case. Then talk to us about having our Rapid Web Application Development Platform, DECK DecisionWare, be the foundation for your new product.