Tuesday, December 30, 2008

seamless teamwork

A couple of weeks ago, I got a copy of Michael Sampson's Seamless Teamwork. A longer review may appear elsewhere but for now, let me say it's pretty nifty and I've already recommended it to some people who are using Sharepoint for team collaboration. If you're new to managing virtual teams but not using Sharepoint then it's still worth a look. I haven't digested chapters 11 & 12 that are available on his web site but extent to which Michael has tied comon project activities and challenges (e.g. brainstorming, vision setting, team building) to Sharepoint functionality is impressive.

Some slightly critical comments:
  • Lots of people loved the framing of the book in the context of the fictional project Delta. I find this device in business books really grating as the author shifts gear between a third-person description (in this case the story of Roger the project manager) and second-person directive statements ("you can do this with the wiki").
  • Sharepoint's social software attributes get quite a few mentions (wikis, blogs, RSS) and yet these are still quite rudimentary compared to other offerings out there. Michael has not persuaded me to love Sharepoint yet.
Looking forward to the next book Michael.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your feedback Matt ... the positive and the critical. M.

Unknown said...

Matt ... just to follow up, did a longer review appear somewhere else? If yes, how do I get to see it please?

Hope you are well,
M.