e-Collaboration, when does it work?

For some time, there are two new kids on the block; collaboration platforms and the information workplace concept. Since in ICT we are still pursuing to build applications with the same capabilities as the philosopher's stone, it is perhaps wise to take a practical look at them.

My earliest memories of e-collaboration date back to mid '90's in which Lotus created the Notes platform. Lotus Notes was so called "groupware", and had roughly the same purpose as collaboration platforms nowadays. Endusers could mail, use agenda's and applications from within a single desktop client. A true revolution in its time, but in our company it failed; nobody would really use it.

Why? Well, it just did not fit into our daily work.
First of all, each of us already had a functioning e-mail client. Sharing documents we did on the fileserver and we all had our own agenda (yes, a paper version). An besides that, starting up the application took a lot of time and when up 'n running, the rest of the apps just seemed to freeze. Nevertheless, later on, the sales community in our company began using Lotus Notes quite succesfully for sharing contact data. How did that come? Well, just as obvious as why it did not work in the first place, everyone in the sales community benefited.

"Just software" is no guarantee for succes
In 1999, study [Mitre] showed that "just software" is no guarantee for succesful collaboration. To achieve successful collaboration, you need "a culture of sharing". To achieve that, the following elements are important:

• A common goal: why do we collaborate?



• Sufficient attention for the underlying business processes and workflows;



• Trust;



• Rules of engagement; how to behave;



• Mutual benefit; private "return on investment";



• Management support; to ensure adequate support;



• Team rewards; reward cooperation more than individual performance;



• Training; to ensure that endusers understand how technology can support collaboration;



• Critical mass usage; sharing with many provides sufficient information which encourages more sharing, et cetera.