Virtual Project Management; by Nicole Williams

Article

Setting up a virtual office offers advantages, including reduced office rental expenses. Yet virtual offices add new challenges such as project tracking. State Policy Network, with its staff spread out in five locations, took time in January to evaluate three virtual office solutions. SPN set evaluation criteria and priorities, then tested Basecamp, Webex and HyperOffice. Since Webex and HyperOffice are virtually the same, we paired them in the following evaluation.

	Basecamp	Webex/ HyperOffice
Project Management	Excellent. Has milestones and relational to-do lists, write boards, file sharing and email notification.	Medium. Has to-do lists, email, file sharing, email notification, bulletin boards, flexible overview display.
To-Do Items	Yes. Easy to re-order to-do items that can be associated with milestones.	Yes. Detailed to-do items with deadlines. Takes a bit longer than Basecamp to input.
Shared Calendar	Not really. There is a milestone-tracking calendar only. Not easy to make it talk with Outlook.	Yes. Functions like Outlook. You must schedule group items on a separate calendar from an individual calendar.
File Sharing	Yes. Files are associated by project.	Yes. Files are organized in your own, customizable files structure.
File Versioning	Yes, but no check-in, check-out system.	Yes. It has a check-in, check-out function.
Training Time Needed	Medium. Staff must decide which features to use and how to use them.	Low. Functions much like Outlook.
Intuitive Interface?	Intuitive for tech-types, but not for non-tech-types.	Yes. Looks like Outlook.
Cost	$30-75/month	$50-200/month

In sum, Basecamp is a much better project-tracking system, while Webex and HyperOffice function much like Outlook but with better document tracking systems. No single solution was good at everything on the SPN wish-list. The decision of which software to use boiled down to project management versus document versioning-and project management won. SPN is integrating Basecamp into its operations and developing several customized reports to make the system more user friendly to non-technical staff.

For more information about these systems, refer to Basecamp (www.basecamp.com), Webex (www.webex.com) and Hyperoffice (www.hyperoffice.com). Questions? Please write me at williams@spn.org.

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