Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

What’s gonna work? (Teamwork!)

One of my daughters watches a show called "WonderPets." She loves it - and I like it a lot, too. One thing I like is a consistent theme: Teamwork helps you solve problems (there is even a catchy song about Teamwork - see link at end of this post) that I can't get out of my head).


In the real world, one of the tricky things about teamwork (particularly if you have distributed or remote teams) is keeping everyone "on task" and on the same page about joint projects. I recently heard from some folks who are doing something about that, in the form of a web-based tool called "TaskBin." I've tried other collaboration / group project approaches, but this one seems awesome so far.


Dirt simple (but elegant in its simplicity...)


One of the things I like about TaskBin so far is it simplicity. And yet, it's very powerful. Some highlights:



  • It is really easy in all aspects. Easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to invite others to your project.

  • All the tasks in the project are visible to everyone else, and ownership is clear.

  • TaskBin handles time zone translation for you - very transparently.

  • It's really easy to add and update tasks.

  • There is a private "Notepad" area to capture thoughts you haven't decide to act on yet.

  • You can make others administrators, so you can have multiple project owners share responsibility.





  • You can subscribe to updates via RSS, or get email updates.


  • You can view and update task status on mobile devices (as well as receive notifications that way).

I'm sure there is more, but I'm still a newbie.


Don't pin me down...


Another interesting thing (that seems to fit well with my team's psyche) is the vaguely specific time frames you can assign to a task. Rather than a specific date, it seems much easier to assign TaskBin's due "time frames" - Today, Tomorrow, This Week, or Sometime Soon. Very liberating.


As free as you want it to be


TaskBin is currently in Beta, so it's all free. When they become a production product, you'll have two models to choose from:




  1. Cost-free - an ad-supported, no cost model.


  2. Ad-free - no ads, but you pay for service.

So, what are you waiting for? You can start a free TaskBin project in about 2 minutes from their home page. If you're not ready to take the plunge, at least test out their demo TaskBin group.





Teamwork Song: