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We have a need. We’re not entirely sure where the need starts and ends but we know that we’d like to better manage projects. Some of these projects are very large, some are small, most are somewhere inbetween. Each project has a team, tasks, meetings, etc. Each project also has documents associated with it – sometimes just a simple Word doc, other times everything from PowerPoint presentations to CAD drawings, which by the way, can get quite large.

In the past, we’ve looked at Domino.Doc, a product that would really go a long way to solve this need. However, it requires us to all agree on a taxonomy, which we can’t because of the breadth of project types.

We think that either Connections, Quickr or some combination can help us address this need. We’ve been playing around with Quickr for some time and have a pretty good understanding of that. However, as I worked with various people at IBM/Lotus, I kept hearing that Connections is something we should look at.

I attended a proof of technology (PoT) event last week at IBM on Connections. I LOVE that IBM puts these on. They are always excellent ways to learn about IBM solutions and they’re often structured in a way that managers and executives could attend the first day and get a great overview of the product, while admins/developers can stay for the rest of the days and go into a bit more of a deep dive into setup/configuration of various products.

Coming out of the event, I’m slightly more clear on when you would want to use Connections vs. Quickr. However, by IBM’s own admission, there’s a lot of overlap!

Blogs, profiles, connecting with others in your organization – all of those things are best done using Connections.

Managing documents, schedules, team calendars, etc. – all of those things are best done using Quickr.

For us, our larger projects seem to make sense to exist in Quickr. The structure and layout of Quickr lends itself better to things like check in/out, revisions, etc. – all of which you’d expect in a document management tool.

However, small and medium projects could really exist in both. Infact, Connections has a neat “Activities” feature which works like a really fancy to-do list and integrates into Notes. You can even have sort of activity templates which are a pre-made list of things someone must do for particular activities. An example of this would be a check-list activity of things a manager must do when hiring a new employee. Each time that event occurs, you can simply add the template activity to your list and work your way through the checklist.

Connections seems to be built a bit more around activities that close out eventually and have no value in sticking around on your system. In the example above, there would probably not be much value in keeping that checklist 6 months after the person was hired, assuming all of the activities had been completed. However, in our case, many of our projects have multiple versions that span over years; so the need to keep a history of all documents, tasks, etc. is really important.

It’ll be interesting to see how we go about thinking about fitting either, or both, of these products into our environment in the upcoming weeks. Right now, when the topic comes up, we need to stop and remind ourselves about the similarities and differences before we can start thinking about how to use either in the organization.

Regardless, they’re both great products that are quite impressive from a design, function and admin perspective and if you’ve put off looking at either one, I’d highly suggest asking your IBM/Lotus rep about a proof of technology event near you!