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INF3290
Telenor’s Way of Work
Case study Examining the concept of Critical Mass in relation to the implementation of Way of Work as an
information infrastructure
10/26/2010
Jacqueline Osei Bonsu
Camilla Jørmeland
Johan Malmanger
John Alexander Bye
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Contents
1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 3
1.1 About the assignment ................................................................................................................. 4
1.2 Telenor .......................................................................................................................................... 4
1.2.1 Telenor – a large organization spread across borders ...................................................... 5
2 Interaction across borders ................................................................................................................. 5
2.1 Communication throughout history ............................................................................................ 5
2.2 Telenor before Way of Work ........................................................................................................ 6
3 Telenor Way of Work ........................................................................................................................... 6
3.1 Collaboration solutions – communication even when stranded .............................................. 6
3.2 Way of Work’s key technological components ........................................................................... 6
3.2.1 SharePoint ............................................................................................................................ 6
3.2.2 Office Communicator ........................................................................................................... 8
3.3 Structured collaboration – Way of Work .................................................................................... 9
3.3.1 The vision .............................................................................................................................. 9
3.3.2.1 Installed base .................................................................................................................. 10
3.3.2.2 Implementation ............................................................................................................... 11
3.3.3 Evolution ............................................................................................................................. 12
3.3.4 Impact on workflow ............................................................................................................ 12
3.4 Is Way of Work an Information Infrastructure? ........................................................................ 13
4 Critical mass ...................................................................................................................................... 17
4.1 What is ‘critical mass’? .............................................................................................................. 17
4.2 Critical mass in Telenor’s Way of Work .................................................................................... 18
5 Factors ............................................................................................................................................... 20
5.1 Factors that make an impact on infrastructures ..................................................................... 21
5.2 Factors of success ..................................................................................................................... 21
5.2.1 Easy to use .......................................................................................................................... 21
5.2.2 Easy to update .................................................................................................................... 22
5.2.3 Increase in the use of the new platform (WoW) ............................................................... 22
5.2.4 To enhance communication within the company ............................................................. 22
5.3 Challenges .................................................................................................................................. 23
6 Strategies........................................................................................................................................... 23
6.1 Strategies for the WoW-project ................................................................................................. 24
6.2 Alternative strategies ................................................................................................................. 25
6.2.1 Strategies to keep evolving the infrastructure ................................................................. 25
7 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 26
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8 External links ..................................................................................................................................... 28
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1 Introduction
In the wake of the ongoing demand for efficient telecommunications and information
technologies, there has been an escalating focus on the implementation and improvement of
inter-organizational systems and extensive infrastructures in contemporary business
organizations today. The transition from autonomous information systems and complex
applications to interconnected corporate-wide information infrastructures and simple
application system has boost up the efficiency of information communications world-wide.
This includes global networks suCase study: examining the concept of Critical Mass in
relation to the implementation of Way of Work as an information infrastructurech as
Facebook, Twitter and other online communications platforms. Facebook, for example, is in
itself not valuated on the basis of the web applications or its features, but rather on the user
base platform.
The use of cell phones and other communication devices on the other hand, is one of the
fastest growing telecommunication platforms used amongst workers in organizations as well
as individuals for personal purposes. Actually, it would not make any sense to own or even
buy a mobile or cell phone when no one is using them. This brings us to the point of how
important the user base of an information system is, in regards to its availability and
efficiency to users, and the number of people using it. The estimated amount of users of these
information systems (infrastructures or platforms) needed for such communications to be
possible is what is known as critical mass. Factors that may influence critical mass in relation
to socio-dynamics may include the size of the user base system, interrelatedness and level of
communication in a society, or the possibility of public advocacy due to such factors
(Wikipedia, October 2010).
Many organizations today use different information systems to enhance communication
amongst workers in their various departments. Different aspects of these information systems
have been largely focused on the study of information technologies, designed for supporting
specific work practices and roles in work places. An example of this is the Microsoft
SharePoint, which includes the windows SharePoint service (WSS), the Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server (MOSS) and the Microsoft search server. Each of these carries their own
functionalities to the table and builds upon each other (AIIM, 2010).
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The Telenor Way of Work (WoW) is also one of the SharePoint-platforms which enable
collaboration between the employees and their departments. This project was designed to help
the Telenor Company in more effective and environmentally friendly internal
communications, as well as sharing knowledge (Transform AS, 2009). The WOW project
focused on various strategic decisions to achieve critical mass by enhancing its value with a
solid user base infrastructure.
1.1 About the assignment
Our project will mainly be centered on the description of these specific information structures
which is an implementation based on a SharePoint-solution called the Telenor Way of Work
(WOW), giving a brief history of the foundation of the Telenor company and how it is spread
across borders of the world.
Furthermore, the project would also give a short description of the interaction across borders
with emphasis on communication throughout history, as well as how Telenor was before the
introduction of the Way of Work project. This would then give us the stand to describe what
the Telenor Way of work is, with special attention to the collaboration solutions in general,
key technological components that make up Telenor’s Way of Work, SharePoint, governance
within the corporation and the use of the Office Communicator as a platform for SharePoint.
We will also elaborate on some structured collaboration involved in the Way of Work
platform and its vision amongst others. Then the rest of this essay would concentrate on what
critical mass is as far as WoW is concerned and then give a summary concluding our
investigation on the wow project from the result attained from the interviews.
1.2 Telenor
For more than 150 years of accrued experiences within telecommunication together with a
pioneering spirit and a quest for knowledge and development, the Telenor group has been able
to establish operations in about 13 markets around the world, and still expanding. In
collaboration with the history of the Norwegian telecom, the company name; Telenor, has
gone through several phases of changes. The public company that started out in the year 1855
as the “Royal Electric Telegraph” is now what we know as Telenor. It is currently one of the
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global shareholding companies offering some of the most advanced telecommunication
technologies and services in the world (Telenor group, 2010).
1.2.1 Telenor – a large organization spread across borders
From the fasters growing national telephone Service Company in Norway to one of the
world’s largest mobile providers in less than two decades, Telenor has been able to establish
various communication services in about 14 countries across Europe and Asia. From the time
of its initial Public Offering in year 2000, Telenor had a mobile subscriber base of 15 million,
shooting to about 184 million by the end of the second quarter of 2010. Currently, the Telenor
group is engaged in pioneering research and technology development and other areas that are
vital to the promotion of development of the core business in Telenor (Telenor, 2010).
2 Interaction across borders
The purpose of having platforms designed to support communication across borders, is to
overcome the barrier of distance and time.
2.1 Communication throughout history
It is not only the ways in which humans communicate that has changed throughout history,
but also the tools that support them. In the ancient world, people used to engrave symbols in
trees or stones, or make fires to send smoke-signals, in order to communicate messages to
people far away.
In terms of organizations or companies, there has always been a need to communicate,
whether it’s across national borders, inter-organizationally, or company-wide. As companies
expand, the communication gets even more important. The need to communicate information,
emphasize the fact that an organization like Telenor, is an open system, with a need to interact
with its environment.
In order to communicate, companies need channels for information-sharing.
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2.2 Telenor before Way of Work
A common approach to communication and network systems that has been used by numerous
companies worldwide, is groupware such as the Lotus Notes. Group-wares like these are
commonly complemented with communication tools like the regular e-mail, instant
messaging and blogs.
3 Telenor Way of Work
Way of Work is not a solution consisting of one or two single systems. In fact, it consists of
several major systems which when coupled together make up only a part of what it really is.
Before further defining Way of Work, it is important to have at least a basic understanding of
collaboration solutions in general, and the key systems that play an important role in Way of
Work.
3.1 Collaboration solutions – communication even when stranded
Six months ago, in April 2010, the true potential and value of collaboration solutions were put
to the test when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted and contaminated the European
airspace with thick ash clouds. The volcano single handedly managed to bring northern
Europe to a standstill by grounding air traffic bound to and from several major airports, and it
undoubtedly affected a lot of business activity.
With a collaboration solution in place, volcanic activity and other non-controllable events can
have its effect on a business neutralized by removing the need of geographical presence. With
unified communication, the construction manager who never made it with an airplane could
have overseen his building site via Video Chat from his home, and invite the client
representative for a simultaneous build inspection – even when stranded. (UCE, 2010)
3.2 Way of Work’s key technological components
3.2.1 SharePoint
SharePoint is first and foremost a family of products developed by the Microsoft Corporation.
If you had to guess what SharePoint is, just by looking at its name, you would probably guess
that it is a solution that allows the users to share things. This is not far off, but SharePoint is
much more.
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SharePoint is, in essence, a collaboration platform tailored to corporate environments and
organizations. It allows for structured collaboration between colleagues, departments, across
projects and across borders, but what exactly is structured collaboration?
Imagine a software development company that has just started a new project. Specifications
and several use cases have to be written. While these documents are still being written, they
have to be passed back and forth between managers and other project participators for
approval and input. The traditional corporate way of doing this is to create an email, attach the
document in question and send it off to the people who’ll do work on it, usually more than
one person. There are several reasons as to why this is a problem when collaborating with
several people on one document. Firstly, by going the traditional route and sending the
document off as an attachment in an email adds an administration overhead. The people who
receive the email have to open the document up, and add their content, and then return the
document back to the sender. The sender then has to stitch the newly added content together
with his or her own copy. Secondly, the traditional route is a blocking operation. In many
cases, person A has to finish his work before person B can start his. This means that by
sending the document as an attachment, person A is actually blocking person B’s progress
until person A returns his document back to the sender and the sender then notifies B. Thirdly,
with all the documents being sent back and forth with additions and omissions it’s easy to lose
track of exactly what changes that has been to the document.
SharePoint intends to solve the issues that traditional corporate collaboration suffers from.
One of the ways that SharePoint does this is by allowing the sender to make sure that there is
only one instance of the document available. This alone reduces the administration overhead,
and removes the need for document stitching. SharePoint also features a content revision
system, similar to what developers use to manage code bases, which track all changes that are
made to a document. This enables progress tracking and frees the sender of having to contact
each of the editors for status updates. With SharePoint, instead of sending the document itself,
you send a link that points to a centralized instance. This instance of the document can be
edited by several people at the same time, and the editors can view additions almost instantly
thus editing documents via SharePoint is a non-blocking operation. (MS-SP)
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Another key feature of SharePoint is that it lets employees within a corporation broadcast and
share their knowledge via their own personal SharePoint site, thus assisting knowledge
management within the corporation.
3.2.1.1 Governance
Governance within a corporation relates to policies, customs and processes affecting the way
a corporation is directed and administrated. Due to the sheer size and possibilities of
SharePoint and the customizability it allows, a solid governance plan is recommended if not
required to make sure that a specific SharePoint installation can and is fulfilling its intentions
and that it is not left unmanaged.
To aid businesses adopt SharePoint as their collaboration solution of choice, Microsoft have
come up with several governance plans which are ready for use (TNSP, 2007). However, just
like people vary so does businesses, thus many businesses spend resources on developing
such a plan.
A SharePoint governance plan should outline the administration, maintenance and support of
the SharePoint Server. It should identify and address stakeholders such as executive sponsors
and champions, policies (e.g. related to provisioning of sites), education and training plans
and so on. The goal of such a governance plan is to establish governing IT policies that the
SharePoint instance will adhere to. This will in turn help to reduce the risk of e.g. scope creep,
i.e. when a project drifts away from its original purpose, by establishing solid change control
and a solid executive sponsor. (TNSP, 2007)
3.2.2 Office Communicator
Office Communicator, now known as Microsoft Lync, is another product developed by the
Microsoft Corporation which plays a role in Way of Work. It features instant messaging,
Voice over IP and Video Conferencing – all in one single client.
Instant messaging is widely used by people to communicate with friends and family, and
Office Communicator is tailored to bring this type of communication to the corporate
environment. For example, communication via Office Communicator does not have to leave
the intranet, which makes it more secure.
Office Communicator is usually integrated with an existing Microsoft Outlook installation
which is connected to a central Microsoft Exchange Server. This integration allows the Office
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Communicator client to display the availability of contacts based on the contact’s individual
Outlook calendars. This means that if Amy needs a word with Brad, but Brad is currently in a
meeting, Amy will be notified that Brad is in a meeting until 2 PM and she can then decide to
get back to him when his status changes.
Office Communicator further strengthens collaboration within a corporation with features
such as Voice over IP. This means colleagues that would normally communicate via e-mail
can get in touch from wherever they are with a single click, and you can go even further. With
Office Communicator’s Video Conferencing feature, employees can discuss issues face to
face, without being at the same geographical location. Should you need help with an
application that is running on your computer you can easily share your desktop screen with a
colleague, and allow him or her to take control of your session.
Office Communicator also integrates tightly with SharePoint by letting you know if other
colleagues are working on the same document as you (MS TechNet).
3.3 Structured collaboration – Way of Work
3.3.1 The vision
Telenor WoW is Telenor’s take on Unified Communications: in essence the goal is to
improve communication and collaboration. The vision for Telenor Wow is fairly complex,
and covers not only technical aspects, but also environmental goals and perhaps most
importantly the organizational and the human aspects such as cooperation within the
company. There were obvious geographical and cultural challenges: connect 35 000
employees spread over 12 different countries. Working with slogans such as An easier
workday and Connected people work smarter the planners and developers clearly had their
task cut out for them.
A system such as Telenor Wow is naturally meant to streamline several aspects of the users
everyday workflow. In our interviews the interview object used the many challenges related
to storage of files as an example. In a multi-user environment there will be redundant copies
spread between different contributors, version problems, access restrictions and even the
question of simple storage-space. Another essential element is communication within the
company. WoW aimed to improve internal communication with several tools, such as instant
messaging with a presence-function, as well as video and voice-chat.
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WoW is also an effort from Telenor to go green, the idea being that moving the actual
information (digitally in this case) is friendlier to the environment than moving people. With
WoW Telenor hope to reduce their travelling with as much as 20 to 30% within a few years
(Trigger #10).
Telenor also generates revenue by delivering Unified Communication systems to other
companies, and as such the experience and feedback from developing and using WoW is
valuable in of itself.
The goal of using this technological platform to spread a culture of sharing information within
the company is perhaps the ultimate vision behind WoW. As stated by Bjørn Magnus
Kopperud, director and a sponsor of the project, Telenor Wow is not an IT-project, but an
organizational development project (trigger #10). This was also confirmed in our interviews,
and further described in the evolution section below.
3.3.2.1 Installed base
From 1993 to 2002 Telenor acquired several companies, and the majority of these companies
were not so called green field operations. A green field operation is best described as exactly
that, a green field which is empty and that one can build upon without having to worry about
existing systems that are already in place. This meant that the companies that soon became a
part of the Telenor organization together consisted of a mixed bag of different systems. Some
offices had a SharePoint instance, some used a shared drive and others nothing at all. What
they did have in common though, was that the collaboration systems that were in place were
only available through that specific office intranet. In other words, there was no common
platform in place. The Way of Work project wanted to provide a common platform for
collaboration that would span across the entire organization.
One example of an office that already had a SharePoint instance running was Telenor’s office
in Oslo. This SharePoint instance was running mainly to comply with the SOX act. Since this
instance was running an outdated version and there seemed to be no governance in place, it
was decided that the only option would be to green field the Way of Work infrastructure and
in other words, start with a clean slate.
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Even though Way of Work did not directly build upon an installed base such as an already
running SharePoint instance, installed base can still be said to have existed in several
dimensions. For example; selected content from other systems was migrated from old systems
to the new Way of Work platform and employee data was migrated from existing solutions to
the Way of Work platform. If we take the term installed base even further, one could say that
Way of Work built upon installed base in the form of the employee’s knowledge and user
experience with solutions such as instant messaging. In other words, the concepts that Way of
Work involved were not new to many of the users in the organization.
3.3.2.2 Implementation
As Bjørn Magnus Kopperud stresses in his interview in Trigger, WoW was not implemented
using a standard Top-down enforcement policy, but rather slowly introduced by incorporation
of different elements of WoW in different key projects, thus allowing other employees to see
the system and its benefits in action - also known as the pull effect. This was confirmed both
by the subject who was involved in the implementation process and by the end-user subject as
well.
One subject made a point of explaining that Human Resources and IT often are very separated
and somewhat skeptical of one-another. During the development and implementation of
WoW it was made a priority to involve both IT and HR throughout the entire process.
While the pull-approach of creating interest for the system, as opposed to forcing it on
employees worked to a certain extent, changes were eventually made to make WoW build
momentum faster, the push-approach. Examples are actively approaching different user
groups to show potential benefits, introducing collaboration-advisors, using the foot-in-the-
door-approach to increase familiarity with the system by introducing simple aspects of the
system such as Instant Messaging and identifying and providing solutions to cultural and
technical difficulties.
The changes had a positive impact and the active use of WoW is not only increasing but
constantly at a rapider rate. The subject involved in the implementation identified the key-
factors for growth as ease of use, speed, relevance and most importantly accessibility.
Accessibility caused the most drastic increase in use.
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3.3.3 Evolution
As most systems of this magnitude WoW suffered from some growing pains. The speed from
the implementations key-factors was a particular problem. When communication software
suffers from lag, users will revert to their old and proven technologies.
When asked what about positive evolution for WoW, our interview object pointed to SPs
newer versions default-settings for projects being a lot more friendly for a company with
Telenor’s collaborative culture. Now, as opposed to previously, you would need to distinctly
restrict access on a new project. By default they are open to be viewed by all members of the
WoW platform. Newer versions are also easier to use, which is another key element from the
implementation success.
Obviously the WoW’s evolution is not only revolved around its technical maintenance, but by
its evolving user mass. Not just the amount of users, but also the users increased abilities and
interest. The Internet object confirmed that the WoW-users skill and insight in the system is
constantly increasing as they gain more experience.
As for hardware improvements, the gains seem to be countered by higher demands of new
versions. Our subject compared this to an arms race where the increased power is nullified by
higher requirements by new software, and also the higher demands from a user mass which is
growing both in numbers and in complexity.
3.3.4 Impact on workflow
WoW’s impact for the end-user is somewhat obscured by the blurry lines of WoW’s nature.
What is part of WoW and what is not? For our end-user subject this could be hard to
determine. He used Outlook as an example. Outlook is well integrated in WoW, yet it is also
commonly used by people outside of Telenor entirely.
The essence of WoWs, or any other similar systems impact on day-to-day workflow appears
to be closely linked to the specific work tasks of the subject. Our interview subject had several
examples of how different user-types found very different improvements in their workflow.
Advisors and others that have days heavily revolving around meetings mainly use the
LiveMeeting planning software, people that are forced to travel take advantage of the
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presence-system on their mobile devices while people working on shared documents and
similar, such as researchers, will find the biggest benefits in sub-version and central storage
systems.
When poised with the question that if a system so dependent on central storage and cloud-
computing could cause bigger problems with downtime or other technical issues our end-user
replied that while temporary net-problems could cause something paramount to panic, he
believed that such problems would have had similar impact even without WoW due to
peoples dependency on the Internet in today’s work environment. He also said that people
found their own solutions contingency plans, such as local backup and using older
technologies such as phone-conferencing to combat lagging sound on net meetings.
Interestingly the biggest impact our interview object noticed with the introduction of Telenor
WoW was not a technical one, but a human one: that of peoples attitude towards sharing
information and collaboration. Telenor now has a culture for knowledge-sharing. WoW is
incorporated in everything from the intranet portal sites sharing different divisions’ progress
and ideas, to the open office landscapes which encourage the sharing of ideas in a more
physical way. This is proof that Telenor was able to succeed in perhaps their most far-fetched
goal: to spread a collaborative culture within the company or at the very least reinforcing it,
by introducing an informational infra-structure.
3.4 Is Way of Work an Information Infrastructure?
The difference between a system and an infrastructure is not always obvious, nor is the
difference between an information system and an information infrastructure. To aid the
decision of whether or not an infrastructure is in fact an Information Infrastructure, also
known as II, the definition by Ole Hanseth will be used.
Hanseth defines an information infrastructure as “a shared, evolving, open, standardized, and
heterogeneous installed base”. (Hanseth, 2002).
In this chapter, we’ll answer these criteria’s one by one and conclude whether or not Way of
Work satisfies these.
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Shared
As mentioned earlier in this paper, Way of Work is a collection of several systems that are
tightly integrated with each other and communication between these systems have to be in
place for the platform to serve its purpose. The communication mentioned involves sharing of
data between systems that do not necessarily share the same set of activities. Hanseth wrote;
“as the number of applications a specific application is integrated with grows, the application
changes character: from an ordinary application supporting a specific set of activities towards
an infrastructure for a larger set of activities within a larger community”. (Hanseth, 2002)
It’s only through sharing the data that Way of Work contains that the solution has a use. The
infrastructure is shared by a collection of users and user groups. In our view, Way of Work
does meet the criteria of being shared.
Evolving
Hanseth writes; “a key characteristic of infrastructures is the fact that they evolve
continuously.” (Hanseth, 2002)
Way of Work has been continuously evolving since the first iteration through the work done
to meet change requests put forth by stakeholders, and through software and hardware
upgrades. Way of Work maintains a roadmap with major releases twice a year. At the
moment, the transition from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 is underway.
With this in mind, Way of Work does meet the criteria of being an evolving infrastructure.
Open
Hanseth writes; “Openness in this context means lack of borders.”.
For an infrastructure to be regarded as open there should be no border that decides the number
of elements it may include, such as a restriction of the maximum amount of users. Hanseth
also writes that “an infrastructure is also open in the sense that there is no limit to who might
participate and contribute to its design and deployment. Lastly, its development has no
beginning or ending – its development time is open”. (Hanseth, 2002)
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As already mentioned above in the discussion regarding whether or not Way of Work can be
thought of as an evolving infrastructure, the development phase of Way of Work is an
ongoing effort and change requests are still being filed by the users and met by the project
team.
Way of Work consists of several systems that are licensed. These licenses come with certain
restrictions, such as an upper limit for the amount of users that may use the solution.
However, the issues regarding licensing are just as surmountable as having to upgrade e.g.
server capacity to meet an increasing user base. Therefore, it is our view that Way of Work
meets the criteria of being open.
Standardized
Hanseth writes; “Standards are a crucial aspect of open infrastructures” (Hanseth, 2002)
Way of Work is a project that spans companies, borders and cultures. With this in mind, it is
apparent that standards had to be in place that would describe how data should be added and
shared via the Way of Work platform. To achieve awareness of these standards, every user of
Way of Work was offered a package deal containing learning material that described how the
platform was supposed to be used. In addition to the learning material, one person in each
department was assigned the role of being a Collaboration Advisor whose task was to aid in
the correct use of the platform.
The systems that Way of Work consists of are developed by Microsoft and the systems
themselves are proprietary. However, the protocols that enable interaction with these systems
are well documented, such as the SharePoint protocol which is built on the open WebDAV
protocol.
In our view, Way of Work meets the criteria of being standardized.
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Heterogeneous
A standardized infrastructure can also be heterogeneous, for example in the sense that they
include components of different kinds. Hanseth uses the example of TCP/IP which is built
upon a wide range of more basic telecom infrastructures (Hanseth, 2002).
Way of Work can be said to be heterogeneous in several ways. Firstly, Telenor is an
organization which is spread across borders and Way of Work is being used by departments in
several different countries. This means that the pool of end users is comprised of many
different cultures and thus Way of Work can be said to be heterogeneous on the non-technical
human and social level.
Secondly, Way of Work is heterogeneous in that it consists of several systems that build upon
a wide range of infrastructures and protocols. For example, SharePoint which is a part of Way
of Work runs in an application container, which uses the HTTP protocol, which uses the link
layer and so on.
The aforementioned information leads us to believe that Way of Work is heterogeneous in
several dimensions and thus it meets the criteria of being heterogeneous.
Installed base
When the Way of Work project started in 2006, one of the goals was to keep the
customization of the systems within Way of Work to a minimum. The reasoning behind this
choice was to enable easier transitions to new versions of the proprietary systems that are a
part of the platform. Where in some infrastructures the development is limited by an earlier
version, the greatest limiting factor in Way of Work was rather the wish of not going too far
beyond the out of the box functionality. It is important to note, however, that this does not
mean that no changes were and are being made to the infrastructure because this type of
activity was and still is being carried out, and these changes still have to fit with the
infrastructure as it is at that moment (Hanseth, 2002).
Summary
It is our view that Way of Work qualifies as an information infrastructure that is indeed “a
shared, evolving, open, standardized, and heterogeneous installed base”. (Hanseth, 2002)
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4 Critical mass
4.1 What is ‘critical mass’?
Critical mass is a sociodynamic term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum in a
social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and fuels further growth
(“Critical mass (sociodynamics)”, Wikipedia). Today critical mass is used, amongst other
things, to set milestone goals in implementation processes as well as a tool to predict
longevity of a new system.
The term critical mass is used in a wide variety of fields, but was applied to computer
mediated communication as early as 1968 by the American computer scientist J.C.R Licklider
when he explored the computer as a communication device. At such an early stage critical
mass was merely defined as the required number of active users for a system to be at all
plausible to solve a given problem. While critical mass has been the topic of many articles
since then, its relevance only increases with the number of social networks and platforms that
are deployed these days. Everett M. Rogers published the book Diffusion of Innovations in
1962 where he looks closer at challenges posed by introducing innovations. While his
research originally was intended for social studies it has become widely accepted in
communication and technology adaption studies (“Everett Rogers”, Wikipedia).
As for strategies to achieve critical mass when introducing an innovation Rogers suggested
having highly respected individuals in a network or organization adopt the new technology,
the idea being that these will then work as trendsetters and create a desire for the product in
question. He also suggests injecting an innovation into a group of individuals that are open to
new technologies, in order to create success Tories and positive reactions. Rogers also
introduced the term early adopters, who are the first wave of end-users of a product and may
work as trendsetters, and stresses their importance as targets when introducing an innovation.
The early adopters are to Rogers essential in building momentum towards critical mass.
The theory of critical mass also shares several similarities with the One-third hypothesis
launched by Hugo Otto Engelmann (“One-third hypothesis”, Wikipedia), and one third seems
to be a common number when deciding on a goal or milestone for achieving critical mass, and
as we will see in section 4.2 it was also the amount chosen by Telenor.
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The concept can also be described by what is called Metcalfe’s law which states that “The
value of a network increases with the square of the number of users connected to the
network” (“Metcalfe’s Law”, Wikipedia). In connection to the Telenor Way of Work, this
means, the more employees use the WoW solution, the more valuable and useful WoW
becomes. The diagram below shows the law of Metcalfe; illustrating how a system’s critical
mass defines and creates value for its users.
Figur 1: This diagram shows the network effect in a few simple telephone networks
4.2 Critical mass in Telenor’s Way of Work
The group in charge of implementation defined the critical mass as one third of the employees
in Telenor. To introduce something bottom-up to a huge quantity of users, stretching across
such geographical distances, and with a group you could hardly call heterogeneous, they
certainly had their work cut out for them. On the bright side, with Telenor having an large
amount of employees that are interested in new technologies, as seen earlier in the article,
finding early adopters would not be much of an issue.
To track their progress, various statistics were tracked and monitored. This allowed the group
working on the implementation to check not only the amount of users, but also more detailed
information like how many communicator sessions were started and such.
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As mentioned briefly in the implementation section, one of our interview subjects explained
that a common problem when training individuals from different departments they would
learn things but when they returned to their usual departments they would fall back into the
traditional way of doing things. It was much more beneficial to get whole departments or pick
certain projects which seemed suited to implementation of the new tools, and establish a
workgroup. Since SharePoint in its core revolves around collaboration, learning the tools with
their day-to-day co-workers helped people bring back their new skills and actually implement
them in their workflow. In essence one could say that Telenor successfully started by attaining
critical mass within select parts or departments of the company, rather than instantly aiming
for the company as a whole.
On some occasions reorganizations or the dissolving of workgroups would lead to the
individuals being spread around the company. While overall detrimental, one of our subjects
found that occasionally some of the individuals were seen as opinion leaders or innovators,
and were able to plant a seed in their new departments, and therefore causing WoW to spread
in an unexpected way.
From our interviews another interesting dilemma regarding critical mass arose: users may be
reluctant to use new technology because the availability of the new technology throughout the
company is low, and the availability will remain low because people will not want to start
using a technology which has a low amount of users.
On the subject of critical mass, one of our interview subjects says that there are many factors
that play an important role in how a critical mass can be defined and achieved. One factor he
mentions is the intensity of use. Put simple, the intensity of use of the system varies. While
one employee may use WoW in pretty much every task they conduct, other may just use
WoW on occasions. Another evident factor is the system’s number of users. He believes that
the number of users is way past the one-third that was set to be necessary in order to obtain a
critical mass, but that the intensity of use is decided by the work-tasks performed. To
illustrate, the Communicator is set to default when an employee turns their machine on in the
morning. The question is then if the user can be included as a part of the critical mass? The
interview object says that it is formal organizational structures that decide the work-tasks, and
that it is informal cooperation-relations that decide if an employee or department is either an
insider or an outsider of the system.
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One important finding from the interviews is the notion about how work-tasks define what is
relevant to the use of WoW. The employees’ everyday life decides what tools in the WoW-
solution they would use in connection with work. If their day was filled up with meetings,
they would necessarily use LiveMeeting. If they are traveling most of their day, they would
use the communicator.
This obstacle was negotiated by the introduction of collaboration advisors (described in
section 3.3.2.2) in departments throughout the organization. Due to their insights in their
department and co-workers tasks they were well equipped to help new users understand how
WoW could facilitate their own workflow.
From our interviews and research it seems then, that Telenor, whether by design or not, used
Rogers strategies by compartmentalizing groups and injecting WoW (the establishing of
workgroups and project-based implementation) and to a certain extent made high-profile
individuals use and promote the system (collaboration advisors). Another thing to note is that
after the decision was made to install WoW company-wide, which in turn drastically
increased accessibility, the usage finally started to grow at the rate Telenor initially wanted.
This reflects Metcalfe’s Law in that the networks value increased as soon as the end-users did
no longer need to worry about what other parts of the company were equipped to use the
WoW-solution.
After critical mass was attained no effort has been put in promoting the WoW package, but
according to statistics shown to us by our subject involved in the implementation process, the
usage is now growing at an exponential rate.
5 Factors
The analysis that follows is an analysis of the case described above. In this analysis, we have
looked at both success-factors of the SharePoint and Telenor WoW infrastructure, and also
challenges in relation to it. Thereafter follows a description of the projects strategy, where this
was used as a template to come up with possible alternatives. We also made our own
contribution by suggesting strategies to help evolve the infrastructure - to make it sustainable.
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5.1 Factors that make an impact on infrastructures
evolving, installed base (Hanseth, 2007). It is clear that there must be factors, in fact
numerous factors, which play an important role in not only how infrastructures are first
implemented, but also in how they evolve over time.
5.2 Factors of success
There were many successful factors that were identified with the introduction of the Telenor
Way of Work. These were used as hypotheses to find out which factors were likely to play a
significant part in determining project successes based on the initial analysis of the case
studies and their prior experience with the initial settings of the SharePoint. Factors which
functioned well and were already familiar to most employees with a close connection to the
Live Messenger was Facebook, and Skype which are all known applications. Below we’ve
listed the factors that we identified as the most successful ones.
5.2.1 Easy to use
Getting people to use instant messaging was not a big deal for most of the users. this is
because most people were already aware of this method of sharing information based on the
knowledge of the use of MSN and other communicative medium like Facebook and other chat
rooms. This made it easy for people to understand the use of the wow very easily. it helped in
their work flow.
Furthermore, to increase the user friendliness of SharePoint, a role named Collaboration
Advisor was created. This was done by appointing one employee in each department to this
role, and one of tasks that the role had to fulfill was playing the role of a change agent. Instead
of having employees within a department call someone who in most cases did not have
knowledge of that departments use case for Sharepoint, they could instead talk with one of
their own colleagues.
It was also easy for the workers to learn about the new introduced platform by mixing the
knowledge of SharePoint with the usual way of work and expectations in a particular
department. i that way, it was easy for the workers to link the use of the SharePoint to their
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daily routines which made it quite easy for lean, without having to do so much about the new
implementation.
5.2.2 Easy to update
Before the introduction of the Way of Work, there were two instances of SharePoint which
were in use. But a Little customization on the programming was needed to new developed
platform to make the SharePoint work. so the fleet from the old platform was not that difficult
to undertake.
Furthermore, there were two other existing SharePoint platforms in use before the
introduction of the wow project. One of them was not built on a proper scale enough so the
Telenor had to work with Avanada who was their solution partner to help customize their
SharePoint especially with the header menu and other components which also made it easy to
update the systems into desirable user-base systems (the wow platform).
5.2.3 Increase in the use of the new platform (WoW)
The increase in the rate of use of the new platform was quite astonishing. this result was
obtained through a statistical research which was carried out every year on the number of
users. this thy did by asking people about their opinions on the use of the new SharePoint
platform, the advantages and disadvantages in terms of its usability and ease with working in
relation to people outside the internal organizations.
Also, the use of the pull approach was very relevant in the enhancement of the growth of the
Way of Work platform. Because there were too many systems in Telenor, therefore Pushing a
system could have led to "systems fatigue” and since systems were not mostly around for too
long, people were not actually expected to learn so much of the systems that were installed.
5.2.4 To enhance communication within the company
From the case study, one other noticeable reason for introducing this new platform was to
improve communication within the company. the Telenor Way of Work was actually aimed
at improving the internal communication as mentioned earlier., such as instant messaging
with a presence-function, as well as video and voice-chat. this has led to a more user friendly
information system, making it less difficult for workers to communicate on a common
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platform that only shared within and between the different departments in the organizations.
With the Telenor WoW platform, the company aspires to cut down their cost of traveling
within some few years. This is to spread a culture of sharing information within the company
which is the main goal for the establishment of the communication.
5.3 Challenges
One of the challenges faced with the introduction of the SharePoint was that, it was not really
user-friendly. Getting people to use the SharePoint was quite harder for most users. this was
because it depended on people working together. So the closest reference was the use of
shared drives which was because SharePoint could not be used as share drive. This was
because the shared drive used only 20% of its functionality. This could be referred back to the
use of installed base in the company, not taking into consideration what kind of installed
based was used in the company but rather, the installed base in terms of the knowledge or
experience of the users with different systems.
With the introduction of the pull approach, though it was a good strategy, one had to sign up
for a number of sessions of e-learning and seminars in order to get the whole package deal to
get access. Also, because of e.g. re-organization of the systems, the pull approach wasn't
recruiting people fast enough, so it took about a year to reach 2000 users. Then for 6 months
the user base expanded to 4000 and another 6 months later, they were at 8000. This showed
growth but at a slow pace. So with this growth rate, the company anticipated a period of 3 to
4 years to be able to meet their target user base capacity, which was quite a challenge for
them.
6 Strategies
“Strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.” (Wikipedia, 2010).
This means that it is in fact the strategy that decides whether a goal is reached or not,
depending on whether the initial strategy turned out to be a successful one, or a failure.
Strategies can be hard to design, especially when depending on numerous factors that has to
be taken into consideration.
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6.1 Strategies for the WoW-project
“It took us a year to reach 2000 users, another 6 months they were at 4000 and 6 months after
that they were at 8000. It was growing, but they were going to need 3-4 years to get where
they wanted to be.”
There were initially made one generic strategy for the adoption process of both Instant
Messaging, and SharePoint. Later in the process, this was divided into two strategies. The
instant messaging part of the solution was already known to most employees, since these
kinds of mass-communication tools were commonly used already. For this function, they just
“put the client out there”, and gave the employees some tasks to be performed, in order to
learn its basic functions. In this way, the instant messaging function can be seen as a foot-in-
the-door approach; if they could make people use this one function, it would be much easier
to affect people’s attitude towards using other functions.
On the other hand, the strategy and adaption approach for the SharePoint solution as a whole
was utterly different. The strategy used was to contact head of department, and question them
about whether or not they actually wanted to have a SharePoint-site for their department. The
head then discussed this with the department members, which collectively made a decision -
and decided on how they would want to use SharePoint. This was an approval process, where
project-members had to present to the departments sketches of different SharePoint sites.
Having two different strategies proved to be a success in the WoW project. Why it worked so
well and therefore became a success, was because the complexity of the tools was so
different. It would not work to throw people into something unfamiliar, and then expect them
to gain interest right away, nor to have a long-term strategy for something that is already
familiar to the users, as it would be a waste of time. The most successful approach towards
gaining interest, has time and time again shown to be the one which includes or represent
something familiar to the user. When it comes to implementing and presenting something
completely new, the approach has to be different, taking one step at a time - which they did.
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6.2 Alternative strategies
It is not easy to come up with alternative strategies to strategies that already proved to have
such a great success. But success can also be measured, and one can question whether
alternative strategies would result in even greater success. However, as described in the case,
two particular holes, or mistakes concerning the initial strategy, was the strategy towards
gaining users, a critical mass, and thereby towards adoption.
Because the user mass showed not to be growing fast enough from the beginning because of
re-organization, they had to change strategy, and went from the pull approach to a “let’s give
everyone this tool”- approach. Even if this new strategy was implemented at last, an
alternative would be to use this from the beginning at. This would probably require more
resources in order to educate employees, as there would not be “super users” in each
department like the first strategy emphasized.
The same goes for the adoption-strategy, as it would probably be beneficial and time-saving
to have implemented two separate strategies from the beginning, thus almost being guaranteed
success right away. These two alternatives only show that changes to the initial strategy can
prove to be crucial to the projects outcome and in this case, necessary to gain success. It is not
known if the project group had thought out several strategies from the beginning, or if these
evolved parallel to the SharePoint’s accomplices. Either way, we would suggest making
several strategies from the beginning, and by that being more prepared and able to react
quickly to mistakes discovered “along the way”.
6.2.1 Strategies to keep evolving the infrastructure
Strategies to keep evolving the SharePoint and WoW infrastructure would definitely revolve
around keeping the infrastructure useful to its users. The day the employees don’t see the
usefulness in having such a tool, finding other ways to manage their work, WoW would go
under. As for now, it is the employees which keep the infrastructure sustainable, simply by
using it.
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One strategy would of course be to always be on the lookout for functionalities or smart tools
under development. This will always keep the infrastructure up to date, and therefore secure
its future. New tools and new ways of doing things evolve rapidly, whether its a new tool for
communicating, saving documents, or just sharing an idea. It is therefore necessary for the
information infrastructure to keep up with this development.
At the same time, one strategy should be to always keep the SharePoint-solution simple
enough, so that no one decides to or unwillingly stops using it because of its complexity and
slow learning-curve. This is one example of how the success-factors of an infrastructure can
be adapted to define new strategies for evolution. As these factors indicates success, there
should be designed a strategy which aims to look after these factors and to adapt them to new
versions and functionalities.
7 Conclusion
Telenor approached the task of implementing WoW with a sound mindset: to not force it upon
its employees from above, but rather attract them through a multi-faceted strategy to create
positive reactions and desire to use it. Perhaps more important than the well-planned approach
was the willingness to face challenges and make changes adapt underway.
The decision in the later stages to switch to the Push-approach and roll the system out
company-wide in order to increase accessibility, rather than considering it a defeat and
stubbornly sticking to the initial plan, was definitely a key aspect in achieving critical mass on
schedule. This worked not only because the system was already well-established in parts of
the organization, and because of the installed-base aspects of the easier components of WoW,
such as the communicator and scheduler, but because Telenor eventually realized that instead
of using the same adoption strategy for the whole package, they used different strategies for
different components, and users could get the training relevant to their own work tasks.
Telenor managed to obtain critical mass and WoW is not only growing rapidly, but it’s doing
so without any extra effort, freeing up time and manpower to keep up with maintenance and
evolution, as well as planning for future versions of the platform. We also saw that as critical
mass was reached, the value of WoW to its actual users increased drastically. This could be
said for all products or systems that run on a network; unless the critical mass is reached the
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product will do little or no good to its end-users. This further enhances the need of reaching
critical mass as soon as possible.
As we have seen in this analysis, many of Telenor’s choices during the process, such as the
compartmentalizing and creating a desire for their innovation by adopting WoW in key areas
of the company, are more or less dead-on with the guidelines and theories regarding critical
mass. We have not only seen what strategies Telenor used to attain critical mass, but also why
this concept is so crucial in implementing a collaborative system. Several of these concepts
are nearly 50 years old, conceived long before today’s social networks and cloud-computing,
yet to this day they remain surprisingly relevant.
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8 External links
AIIM 2010: - SharePoint:
o http://myhosting.com/sharepoint/what-is-sharepoint.aspx
Transform AS, 2009 - Telenor Way Of Work (wow)
o http://www.transformlearning.com/projectdetails.aspx?id=34
Wikipedia, October 2010:
o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass_(sociodynamics)
o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy
o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Rogers
o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-third_hypothesis
Teleport group, 2010
o The history of Telenor
http://www.telenor.com/en/about-us/our-history/norwegian-history/
o Telenor - A large organization spread across borders
http://www.telenor.com/en/about-us/our-business/
o Trigger Kundemagasin
http://www.telenor.no/bedrift/aktuelt/trigger-kundemagasin/
TNSP, 2007
o http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb507202.aspx
UCE, 2010
o http://www.unifiedcommunicationsedge.com/content/irony-ash-clouds-cisco-
and-tandberg
MS-SP
o http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/nb-no/Pages/default.aspx
MS TechNet
o http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262338(office.12).aspx
Hanseth, 2002
o http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~oleha/Publications/ib_ISR_3rd_resubm2.html
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