Google Wave in Action: Real-World Use Case Studies

Google Wave in Action: Real-World Use Case Studies

A week ago we asked readers to tell us how they're using Google Wave in their daily lives, and despite a bit of "ha! no one's using Wave!" snarking on the Twitter, we got lots of interesting responses.

Unsurprisingly, most Wavers use it as a real-time wiki, but some take advantage of features unique to Wave, like inline and private replies, public tags, and gadgets. I featured the most unique use cases I got in a brand new chapter just added to The Complete Guide to Google Wave. The following is the text of the just-published Chapter 10, which describes ways in which a few people who don't work for Google are using Wave to get things done—with screenshots.

So far you've learned the finer workings of Wave in great detail, but there's a big difference between understanding how to swing a hammer and building a house. In this chapter, you'll meet regular people who are already getting things done with Wave in their daily work and life. You'll learn the Wave techniques they've developed through trial and error, and the specific Wave features they use to get certain jobs done. Finally, you'll create wave templates you can use and reuse for your own purposes.

Take a look at some real-world case studies of Wave in action.

Wave as a Group To-do List and Daily Work Log

Justin Swall runs Swall's Associated Services, a small company which provides computer repair and consulting for small businesses. Justin uses Wave as a daily to-do list that he and his co-workers update to track who has done what. He makes use of the "Copy to New Wave" feature to transfer undone items from one day to the next, as shown in Figure 10-1.

Here's Justin's Wave workflow: every day he uses a fresh wave that contains that day's tasks, ordered by priority, and what time they're due. Over the course of the day, Justin's group updates the wave to reflect the current status of each task.

Justin says:

During the day either the initial wave is edited (usually by me) to add additional items to the list, and everyone else uses inline replies to update when items are completed, or if additional information needs to be conveyed back and forth. At the end of each day I copy the day's wave to a new wave, change the date to the next day, remove the items that were completed the day before, add new items or notes to the list, or move items from secondary to primary. Wash, rinse, repeat.

By creating a new wave that carries over the outstanding tasks left on yesterday's wave, Justin leaves behind a daily work log that he can reference later.

Justin prefers Wave to discuss tasks because it's a single, hosted conversation.

For various reasons, Outlook tasks never seemed to work for us. Emailing is a nightmare (I either keep thinking of more things to add to the list and end up sending out five or more messages by morning, or I'm so afraid of doing that I keep it open as a draft so I can keep adding to it then forget to send it at all).

If you're interested in using Wave to manage projects beyond daily tasks, see the later section in this chapter, "Wave for Project Management."