Workspace structure of a service-centered firm

[conrado]

Service oriented firms put their customers first. Within each customer they have (at least one) project(s).

For service oriented firms, one would most frequently have a Workspace structure that will look like this:

* Customer 1
  * Project A
  * Project B
* Customer 2
  * Project C
* Customer 3
  * Project D
  * Project E
  * Project F
* Customer 4
  * Project G

One could optionally have an "Internal" workspace, for things that are not related to any particular project (staff that matter to your business organization, finance, administration, human resources, etc.)

Also, When you grant access to your customers, many times you would not like to have them see everything related to their project, but just deliverables, and maybe a timeline. When this is the case, you would divide your Customer workspace in two sub-workspaces: private, and public. You would grant your customer access to the public workspaces only.

You would see the workspaces like this:
* Customer 1
  * Private
    * Project A
    * Project B
  * Public
    * Project A
    * Project B
* Customer 2
  * Private
    * Project C
  * Public
    * Project C
* Customer 3
  * Private
    * Project D
    * Project E
    * Project F
  * Public
    * Project D
    * Project E
    * Project F

Your customers will only see the public workspaces, and access only the information you have decided to share.

This is what Customer 1 of our example would see:
    * Project A
    * Project B

Was this helpful? Is this how you organize your service-oriented business?

[damendieta]

I do something similar, but I use this:

Customer 1
* Project A
* * Private

I give my customer access to Project A, but not for the private workspace within, so, the internal staff goes to private and the costumer can't see it.

Just another way, but with less workspaces.

Daniel.

[conrado]

That is a good variant Daniel.

Thanks!

[damendieta]

You are welcome.

Daniel.

[iTMGjason]

FWIW ... and we do the inverse;

where the primary team sees Project A/B

Customer 1
* Project A
* * Client-Only
* Project B
* * Client-Only

and the client-oriented tasks (etc) are put into the Client child space.

Same idea

[damendieta]

Same idea. If it works for you. Perfect.

Just one comment.

Most clients don't like the idea of you having information about they projects that you don't share with them. So, if you give them access to a "Client only" workspace, they maybe can have the idea you are hiding something they should know.

So, to avoid this problem, I give them access to the main "Company" and "Project" workspaces. This way, they think you are sharing with them all the information and feel better with you because "you share everything". They never find out that there is a "Private workspace".

And, when you have "Private" workspaces, everything in this sub-workspace will have  "Private"  in front (because of the name of the sub-workspace) and you and your staff have the alert that "this is private" and you never put it in the wrong workspace by mistake. Also, if you use one color for all your "private" workspaces,  green for example, will be really easy to identify what is private.

Just ideas for the people trying to set up his way to work.

The main idea is:

keep it simple.
Keep it fast.
If works for you, is the right way to do it.

I hope it helps someone.

Daniel.

[conrado]

Excellent observations Daniel! Thanks!

[Danney]

A great idea. I somehow thinking this kind of but never come up to this. thanks!