models – Which Tool When

Keeping it simple: S / M / L

Now that Yammer has made the leap to rebrand as Viva Engage, and more of us are using it in the context of Microsoft Teams and Outlook, an even simpler model than all the ones previously designed becomes more obvious. Especially in Teams, where I now have the Chat, Teams (channels), and Viva Engage appsContinue reading “Keeping it simple: S / M / L”

Your Inner and Outer Loops

Conversations about how all the tools in the Office 365 toolbox fit together continue to boil over with stronger and stronger opinions. What products should be dropped or simplified, how the initial launch of Groups should’ve been handled, and what users should be able to turn off and on continue to be points of heated debate. I’veContinue reading “Your Inner and Outer Loops”

Urgency vs. Audience vs. Generation

One measure of the usefulness of a model is how extensible it becomes over time. It was therefore extremely gratifying to see last year that Wictor Wilen from Avanade was able to build on the same model introduced in 2015 to discuss the important factor of generational preferences. The assertion at the beginning of theContinue reading “Urgency vs. Audience vs. Generation”

Urgency vs Audience with Context

Richard and Kanwal from 2tolead had much larger ambitions in answering The Question, and they do so at length in their whitepaper: When to Use What in Office 365. I was initially trying to just answer that nagging question and help people get off the starting line with their adoption of new tools in the OfficeContinue reading “Urgency vs Audience with Context”

Urgency vs Audience

My original post on this topic has had several thousand views in the last 18 months. It seems to help people realize that there are simple ways to frame all the myriad ways that we have to collaborate. I’ll reproduce the post below in case, you know, Medium goes away or something. Originally posted on Medium, JanContinue reading “Urgency vs Audience”

There are models

“All models are wrong but some are useful.” – George Box. I have a confession: while this site is obviously now written from a point of view that believes our focus on “which tool when” is misplaced, that question is precisely where I started. Every model I came up with to answer this nagging question wasn’tContinue reading “There are models”

Fair Question

Which collaboration tool do I use when? It’s not an unreasonable question. Tools to improve our shared communication have been proliferating since the campfire. Wikipedia breaks them down into three main categories: those for communication (e.g. IM), collaboration (e.g. videoconferencing), and coordination (e.g. shared calendars and task management). Each of these categories continues to grow and evolveContinue reading “Fair Question”