By Dennis D. McDonald

Over the past week or so Michael Kaplan and I have been talking about our common interest in collaboration tools and project management.

The overlap of our interests is pretty straightforward. Michael’s company is developing a set of tools for project managers built for delivery on the Google Apps platform. Based on my own project management experience,  I’ve been long interested in how project managers can make use of modern collaboration and communication technologies, including basic tools like blogs and social networks.

I’m a devoted Google+ users so I’ve suggested to Mike that we start an informal Google+ “circle” of people interested in “collaborative project management.” Here are some of the things we might discuss via Google+ discussion features and/or via the video “hangouts” feature:

1. What’s the difference — if any — between “collaborative” and “non-collaborative” project management?
2. Have you had any difficulties in convincing members of your project team to use more collaborative tools such as SharePoint or group messaging services to work together?
3. How do you deal with “holdouts” who insist on using traditional meetings and emails to share information and collaboratively develop documents or other products?
4. How do you address security issues when members of your project team aren’t employees of your own company?

These are just a few of the topics Mike and I came up with to discuss. If you are interested in “joining” this group and participating in discussions about these types of topics, please let me or Mike know via email, or just “+1” this post if you’re reading this on Google+ and we’ll add you to the circle.

• Dennis: dennis.d.mcdonald@gmail.com
• Mike: kaplan.usa@gmail.com