5. Collaboration Software
Identify Select Implement Operate
Setting priorities with Reviewing vendors Customising Software Support
business Running RFT Building Templates Training new users
Getting user requirements Purchase approval Testing Software Upgrading functionality
Determining required Training Users Developing new templates
functionality
6. Does your organisation have a collaboration strategy?
5%
10%
36%
No
Yes, an informal one
Yes, a formal, documented
one
Yes, but may vary between
business units
49%
7. Who drives your organisation's collaboration strategy?
14%
24%
14% IT
Support Function (e.g. HR,
KM, Information Manage-
ment, Finance)
Line of Business
Corporate Head Office
(Senior Executive group or
CEO)
No-one
Other
14%
22%
14%
8. Identify and rank the top 5 of the main factors behind your
organisation's interest in collaborative software.
Improving team productivity
Improving decision-making
Improving individual productivity
Reducing risk of lost information
Improving customer service
Improving time to market of product or service offerings
Regulatory & compliance issues around content & records management
Reducing travel costs
Reducing Total Cost of Ow nership of file & email storage (e.g. shared drives).
Keeping pace w ith our competitors
Don't know
Recommended by vendor / consultant
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
9. How would you rate the following functions in terms of their
importance in collaboration software?
Search
Shared Document Storage & Access
Collaborative text content creation & editing (e.g. w iki)
Forums & discussion
Single sign on
Calendaring & Scheduling
Asynchronous Messaging (e.g. email)
RSS or other XML data feeds
Workflow and process management
Capability to w ork on the netw ork and off-line (e.g. Lotus Notes replication, Google Gears)
Collaborative creation & editing of diagrams & images
Text publishing (e.g. blogging)
Tagging & social bookmarking
Integration: APIs, mashability, exposed w eb services, SoA etc.
Directories & w hite pages
Web conferencing
Application Sharing
Synchronous Messaging (e.g. IM)
Access from Mobile Devices (e.g. Blackberry, Palm, iPhone)
Microblogging/group messaging (e.g. Tw itter, Yammer)
Social netw orking (e.g. Facebook)
VoIP conferencing
Video publishing (e.g. vodcasting)
Audio publishing (e.g. podcasts)
Irrelevant 3D Virtual Worlds (e.g. Second Life)
Nice-to-Have
Critical 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
10. What steps of the collaboration software lifecycle has your
organisation already completed?
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Identify Select Implement Operate Within 12 mths Beyond 12 mths None
11. If your organisation has already considered one or more
collaboration software products, what are they?
27 responses / 50 products
iCtye, Google Docs, Blackboard Wiki, Microsoft (Sharepoint,
Outlook, Exchange), Ektron, Allette Systems (Pageseeder),
EMC Documentum (eRooms), Kavi, Alfresco, Jive SBS,
Telligent, OpenText Social Media, Lotus (Notes, Quickr,
Connections), MindTouch, Atlassian (Confluence, JIRA),
Salesforce, MediaWiki, Drupal, Edna, Blackboard, Sakai,
BSCW, Matrix, Teamcenter, Windchill, Webex, IM, Sitescape
(Novell), SAP, Socialtext, Traction, Novell Teaming, Govdex,
Twiki, Intralogics, Drop Box, Skype, K2 BlackPearl, Joomla,
Twitter, Yammer, DotNetNuke, Wordpress, OpenCMS.
12. If your organisation has already considered one or more
collaboration software products, what are they?
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Sharepoint appeared in 16 responses (60%)
13. If your organisation has already obtained one or more
collaboration software products, what are they?
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
10 out of 26 responses using Sharepoint (38%).
7 out of the 14 responses who have obtained only 1 tool
are using Sharepoint (50%).
14. How satisfied were you with this process?
completely mostly neutral mostly completely
unsatisfied unsatisfied satisfied satisfied
Identify 1 5 1
Select 1 2 2 1
Implement 2 2 4
Operate 1 2 6
15. Did you receive external help with this process?
no vendor other
Identify 2 5 5
Select 1 3 5
Implement 4 2 5
Operate 5 2 5
16. Identify: What one specific thing would you do differently if
you had to do this again?
Was happy with the process the system did not need IT support
which was great, many systems need more support and thereofre
need more IT buy-in upfront.
Specify the criteria for success
My issue was that the solution was selected BEFORE the business
requirements were determined.
Will have to do it again. Organisational needs will have developed by
then, as will the maturity of the market. Would like more resources to
consult and do the analysis of course.
Don't get IT involved.
Not underestimate how time-consuming implementing collaboration
tools can be - and that this is more about organisation, people and
change management than it is about technology.
17. Select: What one specific thing would you do differently if you
had to do this again?
Ensure the scope of the requirements was totally clear at the
beginning of the project
More/better user requirement definition and end user engagement
Work harder at separating the selection of social software from
selection of the document management system
Delay - product space still seems crowded and immature.
As these are internal implementation projects and for the most part
do not have a huge licensing component associated with the
purchase (most of the cost is the internal development costs) the
business case development needed to focus more on the business
benefits of the implementation and illustrate how the solution will
improve current processes.
18. Implement: What one specific thing would you do differently if
you had to do this again?
Training the users
We purchased our wiki system to address a particular need. We then
branched out with a few pilot uses, to see what would happen. We
intended these to be small experiments, but they have grown a lot
more than we expected and really need a bit more structure around
them... a support plan would have been a very good idea!!
Spend more time on training and change management.
Put better project processes in place - particularly in requirements
gathering, development and configuration management.
Far more research on the product itself, and not be left with some
nasty surprises once we got down to detailed planning, especially
around a) Information Architecture constraints, and b) mapping
business governance to the complex demands of the software.
Gotten more video instruction .
Allow more time to develop particiapant involvement
19. Operate: What one specific thing would you do differently if
you had to do this again? (1 of 2)
Strategic approach - gained more support from key management
early on.
Training - identified more resources to assist in upfront training.
Given that the academic project is unfunded - at least to now, there
has been little option but to go with what institutional support has
been available for the selected x software (which is by far the best of
the options reviewed). Given that x is a low priority for the hosting
organization, service levels have been poor and there have been
some prolonged outages due to issues unrelated to the x software.
Hopefully we are on the way to achieve funding that will allow us to
host the application ourselves.
The division that selected y clearly made the wrong choice, it would
have been far better to go with z, which had already been proven in
another division. Probably would have saved several million dollars! I
had not power to influence the decision.
20. Operate: What one specific thing would you do differently if
you had to do this again? (2 of 2)
Push harder to get MOSS, not just WSS and ideally get Webcam
conferencing.
Place more emphasis on advertising the benefits.
Spend more time on templates and end-user guidance.
Make sure Sharepoint goes into a more stable environment.
Get the IT folks to recognise that Sharepoint is not just for
prescriptive CMS ECM but also can be used collaboratively, eg. they
have turned off the blogging feature, they hadn't turned on the RSS
features.
Focus on user base rather than technology.
21.
22. Information Ecology Revisited
Information Strategy
Information Politics
Federal, Feudal, Monarchy, Anarchy
Information Behaviour
Information Staff
Information Processes
Information Architecture
23. Questions for Intranet Managers
Where does your intranet sit in your information
ecology?
Does it interact well with other species?
How does the ecosystem appear to the user?
(global usability)
How do individuals interact with each other
through this ecosystem? (sociability)
