Real-Time Collaboration is Great, Just Not At This Time

A Forrester study is reporting that real-time collaboration is not catching on. As you can see from the figure above Email is clearly the winner with 87% of workers using it at least every hour. This of course is followed by word processors with 79% and Web browser (web apps) with 76%.

As much as we all want to be able to collaborate in real time honestly what does it buy us? Most of the time we are too consumed with the quantity of work that there is no time for real-time. This is why email is and will continue to be the #1 form of team collaboration. You can send and receive email at your leisure. Almost every gadget on the planet supports email in some form or fashion. If done properly it won’t overwhelm you into a state of numbness because you know you can check it when you get around to it and continue on your current task in real-time.

With my teams I use Basecamp which is a life saver for sure. It works great for any size team, 2 to 100 plus. Its not real time and that is exactly why I love it. Are you collaborating in real-time with your team? If so how is that working for you?