Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, Google is a multinational advertising, search and Internet software technologies company that offers many of its products free over the Internet. Many of its management tools require only an account with Google to set up. These tools work together to allow integrated management of projects and can all be accessed from the same page within a Google account.
Calendar
Google Calendar is a free calendar application available over the Internet. No download is necessary to use the calendar. It can be used as a project management tool for a few reasons: the calendar is sharable. Anyone given permission can see and edit the calendar. A team member, therefore, could set up a calendar with deadlines for a project's completion and share it with the entire team. The calendar also offers a tasks feature, in which any authorized user can add and edit tasks on the calendar. For example, a team member could create a task that needs to be completed by a certain date, which any team member can work on. When the task is complete, all the team members will know. Furthermore, notifications can be set up so that all team members are told through their email when a task is complete or an event, such as a team meeting, is taking place.
Documents
Google Documents allows project managers to organize and share files related to a single project. Files can include Word documents, video files, and image files. Google Documents helps a team manage projects by allowing every team member to have access to all the documents, or by restricting access to documents for certain members in case this is needed as well. Furthermore, team members are notified when a document is updated or added to the shared folders list. For example, a team leader could distribute a memo concerning a project to the entire team by typing it on his or her computer and uploading it to Google Documents. By giving everyone access to the document, every team member automatically receives a notification about the document as well as the ability to edit and comment on it. This aids and streamlines communication within a project's work flow.
Groups
Google Groups lets anyone on a project team create a group with different access levels to group discussions, documents, and all other applications, such as Google Calendar, that are associated with the group. This application lets project managers keep track of conversations within a group and create multiple groups within a team in order to focus different aspects of a project among certain members. For example, if two members are working on the testing environment for a project in development and using Google Documents to discuss their work, the team leader may decide to add another member to the testing environment team. That team can now bring the new member up to speed on their discussions by adding him or her to the testing environment group that they've made on Google Groups.
