Collaborative planning software

Collaborative planning software helps people plan projects and activities together on the peer base. Everyone can equally contribute, assign tasks and track the progress.

Collaborative planning software is a mixture of project management software, groupware and collaborative software. The added value of such software is that it enables you to decentralize control and responsibility for overall plans and permits online access to plans that are equal for all related participants.

This type of tool is designed to use in cooperation with other people so the important trait is that several individuals may be aware of task specification and track the results of this task. Nevertheless project extranets and online spreadsheets may also be referred to collaborative planning software.

Comparison of functionality

Collaborative planning software includes some nuances that differentiate it from planning software and collaborative software:

• Planning software is developed in order to lighten and simplify planning process but does not imply different access rules for different projects and participants. It does not usually allow broadening tasks and projects description.
• Collaborative software is designed to help people discuss the concrete topic and edit the concrete document. Although such software has a good base for working on different formats of files, it does not allow you to structure and treat them as things to do. It does not have capacity to handle other plans that do not require active collaboration in the same tool.

Usage

Collaborative planning software may be useful when:

• Several people work on the same activity that demands permanent planning and collaboration;
• The team members and the manager need to be on the same page;
• You're working in a distributed team or involve mobile job engagements;
• There are several hierarchical levels in the team/company;
• You need to decentralize control and encourage individual responsibility;
• The project consists of several tasks that should be assigned to different people;
• A group of people is working together on planning and fulfilling the sophisticated or multistage project.
• Responsible parties need easily organize and track all aspects of the project plan in one place (on the web, particularly).

Collaborative planning software appeared as Web2.0 tools, when people got an opportunity to work together online even when they are located in different parts of world. Collaborative planning software tools give users wide range of services which are often free.

Examples

• Human Interaction Management System
• LiquidPlanner
• Wrike