ProjExec 7 is coming. If you are coming to IBM ConnectED 2015 next week, stop by booth S6 or come to SPOT 104: Lightning-Fast Development of Native Mobile Apps for IBM Connections and IBM Connections Cloud, where we will be discussing the next step for ProjExec – offline and mobile access from any mobile device.

Here is the session description.

In this session, we will demonstrate how you can rapidly build a mobile application that leverages IBM Connections, IBM Connections Cloud and BlueMix. You will see examples of how to build cross-device, native mobile apps for iOS and Android, with the same ease of use and skill set needed as when building a Domino application. Oh, and did we mention, your mobile apps will work offline too including data and business logic? Come see the future of mobile app development for the IBM community!

Social business applications seem to be crossing the chasm, and platforms such as IBM Connections are being enhanced with more and more applications, such as ProjExec. The realization that all business processes are social to some degree has become widely accepted, and the value that platforms like Connections provide by leveraging the power of the corporate social network to get things done is becoming understood by more executives.

Social business applications and platforms like IBM Connections have, to date, been generally restricted to browser-based access (or browser-based mobile apps). This has been reasonable, as most social applications are rich, complex systems that are typically not designed for, nor do they lend themselves to the “siloed” mobile “app” paradigm.

As such, social business applications (and most business applications in general) are limited to being connected when users are online. This is a major limitation. There are millions of hours of lost potential productivity when users are forced to be offline. What is needed is the ability to work “offline”, e.g.,  in airplane mode, and be able to work with the same productivity as when online. Why should users be required to wait until they arrive at a destination, or pay exorbitant airline charges for slow internet connectivity, in order to do their work? No one would stand for that for writing and responding to email, so why do we accept this as the standard for mobile business applications?

Just like offline email, it will be required to pull data down from enterprise systems in order to work offline. However, it would be impossible to bring all of the data from most enterprise systems down to the local device. What is required is a kind of “selective replication”, a technology pioneered more than 20 years ago by (egad!) Lotus Notes. Why this kind of technology hasn’t been developed for the mobile platform is a mystery. The same limitations of the early internet age (slow/unreliable connection speed, limited storage, etc.) that Lotus Notes responded to with their selective replication functionality are in play in the mobile arena.

It’s time for history to repeat itself. And we’re ready to do that.

Come see us at ConnectED 2015 to see the future of mobile application development.

As we’ve all heard, based upon Fred Brooks’ monumental book The Mythical Man-Month, when you add new people to a late project, it makes the project later. The basic premise that drives this “law” is that communications overhead and ramp up time for the new person(s) will reduce the productivity of the team, and make the project even later.

However, is this true in the world of the activity stream and the Project Wall^TM? Rather than the typical picture of multiple communications paths between team members, with social project management, much of the project communication is between a person and the project, via the activity stream, a phenomenon we call peer-to-project communication. When project team members communicate via the project wall, two key phenomena emerge. First is visibility, as the project team is made aware of things as a group, rather than having to wait until a communication reaches them through an individual path. Further, this visibility is preserved over time, meaning that a new team member can actually “replay” the project by reviewing the project wall.

Giving new members a resource through which they can be brought up to speed without needing a person to replay the history of the project is a key feature of social project management, and it will reduce the ramp up time of new members, and the impact of the ramp up on the team. Further, because everyone on the team is “subscribed” the project wall, adding another person doesn’t add to the number of communications paths in the team in the manner in which Brooks described. Rather than a non-linear increase in communications paths as new members are added, each new member is simply a new connection to the project wall. This minimizes any new communications overhead in the team and reduces the impact of new members on team productivity.

We will have more on both of these phenomena in our upcoming blog posts.

Welcome!

We’ve moved our Project Wall blog to the Trilog Group site! We’ve also rededicated ourselves to providing new and valuable content to the social project management community.

Stay tuned for the latest updates on where IBM and Trilog Group are going with their partnership for Social Project Management, and also for our new “secret” project – Darwino!

More to come. Soon!