Group items tagged

What Is Collaboration? Wood and Gray say that each definition of collaboration used in the articles reviewed has at least one important element missing. They say that any definition must be able to answer the following: Who is doing what, with what means, toward what ends? "This leads us to create the following revised definition," they write: Collaboration occurs when a group of autonomous stakeholders of a problem domain engage in an interactive process, using shared rules, norms, and structures, to act or decide on issues related to that domain. Stakeholders may have shared or differing interests in a problem domain, and these interests may change over time. Some degree of autonomy is required, or else stakeholders "merge" rather than "collaborate." Rules for governing interactions must be implicitly or explicity agreed upon. Acting or deciding is needed to reach a common objective. The domain is the issue or set of issues that stakeholders are interested in, such as local traffic congestion or a nation's economic health. Wood and Gray say that this definition is general enough to include a wide array of collaborative forms but specific enough to exclude others, such as blue ribbon panels that never meet, corporate mergers, and clubs that have no specific problem-solving objectives. The authors next discuss the other 3 issues confronting a comprehensive theory of collaboration.

There are two ways to go about encouraging adoption of social software: fostering grassroots behaviours which develop organically from the bottom-up; or via top-down instruction. In general, the former is more desirable, as it will become self-sustaining over time - people become convinced of the tools' usefulness, demonstrate that to colleagues, and help develop usage in an ad hoc, social way in line with their actual needs.

These key users should: be open to trying new software be influential amongst their peers, thus able to help promulgate usage have the support of their managers Users who are potential evangelists should be identified at every level of management, not just amongst the higher echelons, or amongst the workforce.

3. Convert key users into evangelists Training in the form of short informal sessions (face-to-face or online) and ongoing on-demand support are the basics for encouraging adoption. Too much training or too formal a setting will put users off, and is usually unnecessary.