by David Alison

All too often a project fails or a problem happens in a business because something doesnt get done correctly, on time or in some cases at all. In order for a group of people to function properly together each team member needs to know their role and just as importantly how to properly task others on their team when they need to delegate something. This is just as true of peers working together as it is in a classic manager / subordinate relationship.

Here is a list of dos and donts for sharing tasks with other people

Do: Keep the task assignment simple
When you assign a task to someone think it through and make it as clear as possible without being too wordy. This is of course easy for small, simple tasks (Example: Replace the toner in the printer) but not so on larger tasks. If the task requires more than a short paragraph to describe then chances are you should break it up into multiple tasks.

Dont: Keep people working on something you no longer need
The one thing thats worse than telling someone that you no longer need something they are in the middle of working on is to just let that person keep working on it when you know its no longer needed. Business needs, competitive threats and reactions to industry news can all quickly change priorities. Letting someone continue to spend time on a task that will only result in it being filed in the trash can is incredibly demoralizing.

Do: Make the task clearly achievable
The best tasks to assign to others (and even...

We just released some new user interface updates to SharedStatus. Some of these are just subtle tweaks to make the pages cleaner, while others are designed to add a little sex-appeal. At least that's how Josiah describes them!

The navigation bar along the left side now has small icons next to each entry:

In addition you'll see changed in the way messages are presented:

Not the comments for a message are not auto-expanded in the message area, making it easier to find the discussion right from the top level.

Another change is with the main Dashboard:

The tabs are now much easier to see and navigate with. Take a moment to browse around and let us know what you think!

By David Alison

There are lots of reasons people want to work with a partner when starting or growing a business. In many cases a partnership happens out of a shared passion; two or more people discuss an insanely great idea and before you know it they are sketching out a product or business plan on a cocktail napkin. Then there are those that have an idea but recognize they need someone that has skills they lack or maybe want to share the crushing workload that comes with starting a business.

Finding one or more business partners can be an interesting challenge. Not only do you have to make sure youre picking the right partner, you need to have some candidates to draw from in the first place. But where do you look?

Friends and Colleagues
The most common place to find a business partner is within your current circle of friends and colleagues. If youre a university student it may be someone you have classes with or have teamed up with on a project. Maybe youve been out in the workforce for a while and youve got a lunch group youve been talking to about an idea. It could even be a relative that you know is interested and has experience in the business you want to start.

Going inside of your close circle is very common and often can lead to great partnerships. You know the person pretty well and likely have seen that they have an expertise that can help your business. Provided you dont add a partner from this circle purely because you like them and it would be cool to work...

We have just done a major update to our web site to make our product offering clearer and also to provide a little more information about us as a company. Please take a moment to check it out!

In addition to the web site refresh we have also added a new offer to our Free accounts. Sign up for a Free account and we'll give you 1GB of file storage and project chat rooms for 15 days. Try out the file storage and chat features - if you like them you can always upgrade to one of our paid accounts and make it permanent. 

If you decide not to upgrade your files will remain in your projects but you won't be able to add any additional files and you will not be able to access the chat rooms any longer. As always, if you've got questions, we've got answers. Just ask!

By David Alison

As an entrepreneur you get to experience lots of major milestones, some more important than others. Coming up with the idea, finding the right partner, incorporating the business, launching the web site, getting that first paying customer or client. Each of theseincluding landing funding if thats the fuel to grow the businessare signs that you are progressing.

Another major milestone is the day you decide you need to hire your first employee. You suddenly go from being responsible to your partners and customers to realizing you have a regular payroll you have to cover. Just as you can feel good about the work you do, you can get tremendous satisfaction from knowing the business you created is now adding value by creating jobs for people.

As I reflect back on the successes Ive had with my various business ventures one of the most rewarding experiences was creating jobs for others. As an employer I got a chance to play an important part in the lives of people, helping them expand their careers and watching them grow their families. That reward came with lots of stress, especially when times were tight and we worried how we would make payroll.

Given all thats on the line, below is some guidance on when you should hire that first employee.

Can't see the forest for the trees
Entrepreneurs are used to having a heavy workload. It's just part of the gig. What can be difficult is realizing that one day you (and potentially your partners) are holding your company back...

Last night (March 2, 2011) we updated our project chat rooms to include some great new features:

Updated User Interface
We have optimized the chat room view to be easier to read, with a much wider message area and cleaner view of who is currently in the room.

Transcript Search
You can now search your entire project transcript historygoing back to the day you started your projectto search for key terms in your chat.

Calendar Browse
Looking to see what was said on Wednesday, January 12, 2011? You can quickly select a day from the transcript history and jump into what was said on that day.

The SharedStatus chat rooms are a powerful way to keep your team in touch throughout the day and with these new features you can feel confident that anything you discuss can be referenced in the future. Chat rooms are available to all SharedStatus users with Basic or higher level accounts.

Labels are a powerful way to organize your SharedStatus projects. The key advantage over having a single category is that you can apply as many labels as you like to any message, task or file in a project. Very often things arent easily classified with a single attribute; labels let you think about your project assets in a different way.

A label can represent a variety of different attributes. To update yours just go to the Settings areas of any of your projects. Below are a few examples we at SharedStatus use to help manage our internal projects:

Critical: We apply the critical label to any task (or message) that requires immediate attention. At any point in time we can see whats critical on a project by limiting our view to items that have the critical label applied.

Need Feedback: This is actually a transitory label. With the large quantity of messages and tasks that we place in our more active projects, sometimes we want a way to call out things that we want feedback on from other team members. Once the creator of the task or message has received enough feedback they remove that label.

Reference: There are many times when we need a place to record important instructions for something. It may be as simple as a process for uploading files to a specific web server or details on how to renew some certificate. By applying the reference label we call out to any project members that this is something that they may not need to read right away but could serve as reference material...

By David Alison

Have you given any thought to leaving the "security" of a regular paycheck and going out on your own? If so, this blog post is for you. It is my not so humble opinion that working for yourselfowning your own businessis one of the greatest experiences a person can have. I equate it to the difference between living in your parents home and going out on your own and getting a place to live as a young adult. It is initially pretty frightening but the feeling of independence and growth is incredible and once youve done it successfully you cannot imagine going back to live with Mom and Dad.

I recognize that not everyone is cut out to start his or her own business or even work outside the structure of a corporate environment. The skills required to start and then successfully run a business are not always the same and require that you switch gears quite a bit.

Ive collected a list of attributes that can help you determine if you are the kind of person that can start your own business. Ive been networking with the owners of businesses of all shapes and sizes for many years and found quite a few common themes that I hope you will find valuable.

You are a good candidate to start a business because

You are willing to take risks
This is the most obvious one so obvious I hesitated including it on the list. Starting a business is a risky proposition. You need to be sure that you have set yourself up as much as possible to absorb the risk associated with starting a business,...

By David Alison

Like many web-centric companies our web site is our primary window into the world. Its the first impression most people will ever get of SharedStatus and it serves a critical role in our business model. Though you can iterate over a design and show internal people, its not until you get it into the hands of outsiders that you start to see what works and what doesnt.

Having a decent software analytics package like Clicky or Google Analytics installed gives you a sense of what people are doing when they visit your site; where they go, how long they spend on key pages, where they exit your site, etc. Use the analytics and perform basic A/B tests on pages and you can dramatically improve traffic flows on your site. The challenge is guessing where people are tripping up so you can design your A/B tests - this is where usability testing can help.

Usability Testing was hard
For many years I worked in technology companies that had usability labs to help validate product designs. In the early days this involved dedicated lab space, video cameras, recording equipment and extraordinary amounts of time to do correctly. We would set up our tests and then have to go out and recruit people to come in and walk through our products. Putting together the reports and editing the video into a single selection of feedback was incredibly time consuming.

Usability testing was clearly for large companies that had the resources to pull this off.

Usability Testing is easy
Not long after...

In this series of blog posts we would like to give you some working examples of how to leverage SharedStatus to help you in real world environments. This post will focus on using SharedStatus to help build a new web site.

The first step is to create a project to hold your work. From the main SharedStatus Dashboard click Create a project, then enter the name for the new web site (Spring 2011 Website Refresh for example) and a description.

We're going to include how we want people to use the labels to help keep track of things so for now leave the description blank; we'll return to it after the next few steps.

Labeling Items In Your Project
Next we will add our labels. The labels are important because they will help you organize your project and better understand what needs to be done. The power of labels are that more than one can be applied to an item and they can easily be added or removed as you progress through your project.

• Requirements: this label will be used for messages and tasks that contain actual requirements for the web site, usually from the stakeholders.
• Feedback Needed: this label will be applied to items as people on the design team create content they want others on the team to provide feedback on. After enough feedback has been received (usually on a message that may include a screen shot or page content, though sometimes a task) the author of that item can remove the Feedback Needed label.
• Final: this label is applied to a message, task or file that contains...