Project Management Applications for Community Groups: Open Atrium vs Facebook
I’ve done quite a bit of copywriting work this year for Transition Edinburgh South. TES organises and supports green and community stuff in Edinburgh like waste reuse and upcycle initiatives, talks and gatherings, community gardens, energy schemes, and other outreach activities.
I worked as a copywriter with TES and The Oliphant Group to create content for the TES website and a script for a promotional web video. We chose the open source project management application Open Atrium over Facebook to manage these projects. I love Facebook, but after using Open Atrium for community group projects, we never looked back.
Here’s why:
Basic Features
Open Atrium
Open Atrium is an independent group space for projects to communicate, share and store relevant documentation and organise themselves.
- Blog: enables open-ended discussion through comments. Participants can talk about discrete topics related to a project, post information and get feedback in an organised way. These conversations can also be easily traced and referenced.
- Notebook: allows management and sharing of documents and attachments within the group. The Notebook is organised into ‘books’ with pages that can have any number of files and webpages attached to each. This feature keeps researched information and useful files organised and in one place for easy access.
- Calendar: allows group to keep track of important dates and deadlines.
- Case Tracker (To do list): lists components of each project, who is responsible for each one, task priority and status. If you click on an item, you can access more detailed updates of each job. This has been invaluable for clear communication and making sure each task gets done quickly.
- Shoutbox: like a private twitter, the Shoutbox lets you share short messages, interesting links and information with just the members of your group.
- Dashboard: allows participants to manage and access all Atrium features from one place. The dashboard gives you mini snapshots of all of the activity happening across your groups.
- A generic Facebook Page is great as a forum for discussion and general file sharing, though Pages are public by default. The Pages application is really for individuals and organisations creating a presence in the Facebook community rather than for the organisation of particular projects.
- Facebook Groups are forum spaces for people to come together around a common cause, issue or activity to organize, express objectives, discuss issues, post photos and share related content. They lend themselves well to keeping members abreast of general developments, and providing a space for comments and opinions.
- Facebook Applications like Toodooz and Huddle provide project management support. In general, reviews of Toodooz have shown it to be unsatisfactory and the application is still in its infancy. Huddle is a more professional, social network-style software package, though it only provides the option to work through Facebook and must be purchased (non-profits may apply to have the package for free).
Facebook requires its users to have a Facebook account which potentially connects to and can be visible in other areas of the social networking site.
Staffing
Open Atrium
Someone with some computer savvy needs to set up the software on a server, run upgrades and maintain it.
Facebook project management applications only require users have a Facebook account. However, Facebook can be confusing to the uninitiated Ideally, organisations would have a volunteer to show new participants how to use the site and also what to watch out for (how to keep their information private and so forth).
The nature of Facebook as a general forum makes it much more difficult for a volunteer to keep track of what is happening in various groups and point out where cross-pollination may be useful. However, having such a volunteer is also desirable in a community organisation that coordinates various projects.
Budget
Open Atrium
Free to install and to run.
Also free, though project management software (such as Huddle) that runs through it can have a cost. In some cases, this cost is waved, as with the Huddle Foundation, which provides their software for free to non-profits. Organisations must apply for this funding.
After working as a copywriter on the TES website and promotional video, I found, in a nutshell:
- User-friendly: Open Atrium has all the right features to help community projects organise better and can also be customised pretty easily. Its interface is easy to use, with features clearly and intuitively displayed.
Facebook is useful as a forum, but visually confusing and often counterintuitive when it comes to seriously organising projects.
- Experience: Open Atrium has worked a treat for the projects I’ve been a part of (TES website development as well as a TES promotional video).
- The nature of community group needs: While Facebook requires no hosting and minimal setup, its project management applications are still in their infancy and Facebook Groups work best as a forum for general commentary rather than an organised system for project coordination.
- The nature of community group constituencies: Facebook is primarily a social networking site and, therefore, carries the connotations and technical complications of such.
- Security will always be an issue with Facebook; Open Atrium is secure and totally independent of links to outside sources (unless these links are added by the participants themselves), which means information cannot be accidentally made public.
- People like to keep their social life separate. Open Atrium exists for project purposes and is not designed to be part of the social sphere of its users.
As much as I can't get enough of Facebook, I would definitely go for Open Atrium for community group projects. Its features and the clarity of its layout are designed for them; it is a neutral platform that community group members, volunteers and participants are happy to engage with; and it requires less volunteer time to coordinate effectively. I’m even using it to organise my wedding!
