global collaboration: both art & science
DESCRIPTION
Improving collaboration begins with an understanding of organizational dynamics around teams, communities and networks. Various technologies can help depending on situational needs and business requirements.TRANSCRIPT
All Contents © 2006 Burton Group. All rights reserved.
Global Collaboration: Both Art & Science
Mike GottaPrincipal Analyst
www.burtongroup.com
http://mikeg.typepad.com
October, 2006
2
Context Setting
• Enterprises face unique technology challenges improving productivity at a global and organizational level
• Architecture, integration, security, governance… • Efforts to improve communication, information sharing
and collaboration have not always succeeded • Nature of global work and influence of organizational dynamics
can lead to spectacular failures• IT organizations have been more risk-averse lately
• Market consolidation, cost pressures, compliance… • But the business pendulum is swinging back towards
growth and innovation putting people at the center• Interest in consumer-oriented / socially-oriented solutions
Global Collaboration: Both Art & Science
3Global Collaboration: Both Art & Science
Thesis• Communication, collaboration, and content strategies are
mission-critical• Group productivity • Process performance • Growth and innovation
• A new model is emerging• Channels for communication / spaces for collaboration • Experiences that are contextual and situational-aware• Tools which are standards-based and platform-integrated
• That increasingly spans work and lifestyle• Software and software-as-a-service• “Edge” (socially-oriented) as well as “Core” (traditional IT)
4
Agenda
• A new model• Collaboration is about teaming• Challenges faced by teams• A look at tools with a team context • Recommendations
Global Collaboration: Both Art & Science
5A New Model
Convergence
6A New Model
Content: the currency for all modes of communication and collaboration. Content lifecycle concerns include creation, storage, management, discovery, distribution, archival, and analytics.
7
Agenda
• A new model• Collaboration is about teaming• Challenges faced by teams• A look at tools with a team context • Recommendations
Global Collaboration: Both Art & Science
8
There are many types of teams • Co-located team
• Group predominantly interacts in a face-to-face manner as well as electronically, some virtual aspects but that is not the status-quo.
• Virtual team• Group interacts electronically as its primary means of communicating,
sharing information and collaborating. Face-to-face interactions occur on a semi-regular basis but that is not the primary method of working together.
• Far-flung team• Group rarely, if ever, interacts in a face-to-face manner.
• Complicated by formal boundaries and policies• Customers, partners, suppliers, etc.• Security demands, compliance demands
Collaboration Is About Teaming
9
Organizational requirements are increasingly dynamic• Teams must adapt, everyone can become virtual or far-flung at
any point
Never Assume Stability
Co-locatedTeam
Far-FlungTeam
BusinessPartnerTeam
Far-FlungTeam
VirtualTeam
Co-locatedTeam
10
Putting a team together remains more art than science…
• Culture, time and distance factors (obvious)• Team longevity (composition, team “DNA”)
• Persistent team, temporary team• Stability of team membership • Skills, competencies, experience…
• Team activities (commitment, focus and attention)• Project, process, other (community-oriented)• Nature of work (research vs. transactional)• Level and nature of involvement
• Team alignment (where does the team “fit”)• Standalone team• One team within a hierarchy or other structure of some sort• One team within a community of teams (loose affiliation)
Team Formation
11
Relationship dynamics influence team cohesiveness
• Decision Rights (“what influence over my own destiny”)• Roles and responsibilities• Internal and external structures (e.g., formal reporting)• Self-directing ownership
• Solidarity (“who has my back”)• Diversity (points of view, experience)• Trust and reciprocity• Team size, relationship dynamics and “togetherness”
• Growth Factors (“what’s in it for me”)• Mentoring and apprenticeship (bootstrapping)• Knowledge transfer • Performance measures and succession planning
After Culture, Time & Distance
12
Teams are just one type of group• Communities are another
• Communities Of Interest (related by topic, widely diverse members)• Communities Of Practice (related by methods use, membership more
boundaries and focused)• Micro-networks and teams exist within communities
• Networks facilitate connecting bonds that enable “fluidity”• Many different types: social / informational / mentor …• Strong and weak ties between group members and those outside the
group• Understanding the inter-relationship between groups and networks
(macro and micro) essential to understanding “teaming” from a leadership and followership perspective – as well as from a management viewpoint
After Culture, Time & Distance
13
Agenda
• A new model• Collaboration is about teaming• Challenges faced by teams• A look at tools with a team context • Recommendations
Global Collaboration: Both Art & Science
14
Challenge: Alleviating Fear Of Knowledge Harvesting
• Higher reliance on information sharing and collaboration tools captures a higher level of team member “know how”
• Workers feel that they are giving away their “value add”, are alienated due to physical isolation and perceive a lack of reciprocity when it comes to learning from others.
• Influencing factors include:• Insecurity related to job/role/responsibility• Lack of tools that enable acceptable levels of personal knowledge
management• Absence of management methods that acknowledge and reward
active participation and intellectual contributions at team and individual levels
• Insufficient learning opportunities
Challenges Faced By Teams
15
Challenge: Overcoming Tribes & Secret Societies
• Teams naturally evolve into formal and informal sub-groups, hierarchies and/or networks based on title, role, expertise, personal relationships, etc.
• Absence of face-to-face dialog related to work and social activities causes these problems to be more pronounced
• Influencing factors include:• No connection between agreed-upon group objectives and goals that
make participation and contribution personally relevant• Insufficient cross-dependencies between team members that
balances group and personal success• Misplaced “us” versus “them” internal competition; wrong mix of social
types, social distance and cultural nuances
Challenges Faced By Teams
16
Summary: Effective team-building
• High performing teams are skilled in two main areas• Structure: planning, readiness, roles, standardization,
synchronization… • Adaptation: improvising, creating thinking, receptive to fresh
approaches, encourage ingenuity • Solid leadership, followership, and communication are
common traits in successful virtual team environments• Engagement, explanation, and expectation setting helps prevent
teams from “getting stuck” • Influencing factors include:
• Setting clear vision/goals, consensus on objectives, and metrics• Building team identity, ensuring similar team mental models• Nurturing social contracts and feedback loops across team members• Paying attention to conflict management and resolution practices
Challenges Faced By Teams
17
Sometimes outside perspectives can help
Challenges Faced By Teams
http://www.5off5on.com/welcome.html http://www.pilobolus.com/
18
Agenda
• A new model• Collaboration is about teaming• Challenges faced by teams• A look at tools with a team context • Recommendations• Q&A
Global Collaboration: Both Art & Science
19
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Virtual Workspaces
• Establishes a common sharedspace for groupcoordination andinformation sharingregardless of communicationchannel
• Document libraries,group calendar, search, workflow…
Workflow
Instant Messaging
& Chat
Action Item Management
Meeting & Calendar
Management
Web Conferencing
Document Sharing
ThreadedDiscussions
VoiceConferencing
Source: Sitecape
20
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Wikis
• Establishes away of collaboratingthrough content
• Anyone can edit• Everything is
versioned• Conducive to
organic contentmanagement
Every pageis editable with
revisions tracked
Every pageis editable with
revisions tracked
Sidebar navigationwith search and toolbox to locate
other pages that link here
Sidebar navigationwith search and toolbox to locate
other pages that link here
Work areaswithin this wiki
Work areaswithin this wiki
BackgroundinformationBackgroundinformation
Communitymembers
Communitymembers
Source: WaterWiki, http://europeandcis.undp.org/WaterWiki/index.php/General_Water_Resources
21
Blogs
• Expanding the valueof conversation andcommunity
• Some applications can be delivered withblogs as the underlyingengine
• Disconnected supportfor blogs improving
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Chronologically ordered entriesChronologically ordered entries
People adding their perspectives to this
journal / diary
People adding their perspectives to this
journal / diary
Other blogs that this person or group finds
interesting and/or relevant
Other blogs that this person or group finds
interesting and/or relevant
Trackback indicator and comments
Trackback indicator and comments
22
Tags & Social Bookmarks
• Searching for community wisdom
• Tagging everything• People, content
and applications• Tag visualization and
tag mining
• For intranets, integrated withsearch, securityand identity
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Source: www.connotea.com
Size and colorof tags helps user
awareness
Size and colorof tags helps user
awareness
All tags are clickable with links
going to a drill down page
All tags are clickable with links
going to a drill down page
Tags can be displayed by time or
other factors
Tags can be displayed by time or
other factors
23
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Publish & subscribe via XML Syndication (e.g., RSS)
• Alleviatesinformationoverload andunderload
• Helps usersmanage theirattention andperipheral vision
• Communitybuilding aspects
Information items within the banking
channel
Information items within the banking
channel
Channelsubscriptions
Channelsubscriptions
Source: KnowNow
24
Presence & Location
• Establishing a perception of being connected
• Across devices, at work, on the road or even at home
• Policy and privacy concerns
• Defining a presencelife-cycle
• Publish, subscribe, discover, aggregate, broker, federate…
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Frappr!
Plazes
Source: IBM
25
Instant Messaging (IM)
• Value to teammembers from persistentgroup dialog
• Evolving intoa platformfor “instant”applications
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Source: Parlano
Federation withpublic IM systems
Federation withpublic IM systems
Long-runningconversations segmented by
channel
Long-runningconversations segmented by
channel
26
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Web conferencing
• Long-standingoption for groupsto collaborateover long distance
• Basic meetings,events and virtualclassrooms withrecord/playback
• Evolving into apersistence groupcollaboration space
Source: Adobe
AttendeePresenceAttendeePresence
GroupChat
GroupChat
ConferenceNotes
ConferenceNotes
27
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
More On Record/Playback• Virtual and far flung teams often
lose important context from dailywork and social interactions
• Meeting capture applicablefor interviews, projectrequirements, milestones,lessons learned, informaltutorials…
Source: QuindiSource: YouTube
Recordface-to-face
meetings
Post toweb site
28
Social Networking
• Identifies strong and weak ties across groups (e.g., information flows), often combined with profiles that “humanize” co-workers
A Look At Tools Within A Team Context
Results orderedby social distanceResults ordered
by social distance
Organizational and profile informationOrganizational and profile information
Source: Microsoft Knowledge NetworkSource: IBM, Blue Pages
29
Agenda
• A new model• Collaboration is about teaming• Challenges faced by teams• A look at tools with a team context • Recommendations
Global Collaboration: Both Art & Science
30
Recommendations
Organizational Recommendations
• Make sure you understand the interplay across:• Team purpose, structure and activity type• Degree of coordination and activity complexity over team lifecycle• Inter-dependencies between team members and team size• Geographic dispersion, culture and management styles
• Value planning, communication & team bootstrapping:• Define clear goals, priorities, roles, responsibilities and “practices”• Pay attention to morale, engagement (motivation) and trust factors• Set expectations on behavior and performance measures; define
conflict resolution procedures• Create the right team mix, ensure team mental models are shared;
provide growth avenues that balance personal and team needs• Prioritize verbal and face-to-face communication; build social
relationships with and across team members
31
Recommendations
Technology Recommendations
• Leverage virtual workspaces and wikis to provide a common team area that centralizes shared activities and artifacts
• Exploit blogs as a means to build team and enterprise community by encouraging informal dialog and opinion
• Examine tagging and pub/sub tools to diversify communication channels and provide more flexible information discovery/delivery options for team members
• Bridge distance factors and increase team cohesion through use of real-time communication tools (including presence, location and record/playback)
• Explore use of personal profiles and social networking tools to “humanize” employees and help co-workers connect to those who share common interests, know-how and work activities