Best Group Sizes for Groove

There have often been discussions lately as to the feasibility of the size of a Groove workspace. This has as much to do behind the purpose of the Groove in the first place. In my opinion Groove was really designed for groups up to say 25 or so. But most collaboraiton is among groups of 5-15. But Groove can entertain much larger numbers. The trick is to make collaboration effective and many people will argue this till blue in the face.

Based on some of the workspaces I have worked with, Groove is on average comprised of groups in the 45 range and some are over 150 in size (developer group). Keep in mind you are only storing data that is part of the workspace not the data of 150 users. That said it came back to the collaboration being done and Groove has some minor issues with calendaring and notifications which just don't do well unless you use some amazingly clean and handy tools from Hommes and Process. Then Grove takes a big leap forward. Hommes and Process put back what was sorely missing from Groove when it became part of Office 2007.

Now things like dropping docs form anywhere into Groove (and precisely to the workspace you want is as easy and saving in Office) and emails can also be dropped to Grove workspaces with the flick of a mouse click. Do check http://www.hommesetprocess.com/en

But back to the size issue.

I think you have to decide what it is you are trying to disseminate as information to a specific set of people in Groove and if you need to repeat specific messages but with different groups, how much versioning one does, if the information might be more of a dictation rather than a forum for discussion. And finally is there a need for people to be up to date on the data in a workspace?

Its not cut and dry and at a certian point (250 users) Groove should not be used as a solution but rather Sharepoint.

More on this again with a user group we'll talk about later.