Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly what everyone involved in all of your projects is up to? And, how would you organize that information?

Well, here’s a pretty cool Web 2.0 service that can help you keep tabs on what everyone’s doing (and what they are not doing) and of course to coordinate activities and fix schedule based on that.

Yammer.com – “Twitter” type site for business.

Here’s a couple ways to use this one for better productivity:

1. Check up on stuff that people aren’t doing – So you got person A to do a couple things for you, they’re off doing it and will submit a report to you next week. That is all and well but wouldn’t it make sense to see if they’re doing something wrong, missing something? So you can correct the problem faster and stop wasting time due to miscommunication?

2. Coordinating too many projects? No worries! Keep up with the members in your team so you know exactly what to do next. Think about it, you’re working on 3 different projects with 3 different groups, you start working on project A because to you it’s the most important thing but Team B is having slight issues and can’t deliver on time. Now, when you are done with your part for the project you get the “news” about the problem, Team B calls in to say everything’s done and ready to go.

Here’s your problem: The stuff you worked on now has to be delayed.

The stuff that could’ve been done now can’t be done because you haven’t done your part yet.

Sounds familiar? Coordinating team work was never an easy task and this is where most “teams” seem to waste too much of their time. And that’s where I see the promises of Yammer – in facilitating short to the point updates for team members to work together and more efficiently.

3. Keeping everyone on the same page.

4. Organization - If you work with more than 2 people and have any sort of team management or project coordination role, I know how though it is to keep tabs of what everyone is doing especially if you do this for more than 2 projects at the same time. So being able to get a quick overview is extremely helpful. : )

Something else — How about Yammer for Students?

I think this is a good area of development for sites like Twitter and Yammer. Think about university students who work in tons of teams on various different projects.

I remember doing tons of that. In fact, we even had a course on project management and team management in first year engineering but even with that, team management is pretty hard. You always get people who work at different paces, who’re passionate about different parts of a project and you’re sitting there scratching your head trying to figure out how to pull it all together and hand in the project!

At least that’s what engineering is like, I can’t speak for all faculties but I do think something like this would catch on in that world.

Anyhow…back to the main thing…

Here’s the link, test drive it with your team and see what it does for you.

I’ll be using it with my team for the next couple of days and let you know how it goes!

Yammer.com – “Twitter” type site for business.

And in case you’re wondering, Yammer launched on Sep 8 08 at TechCrunch50.