Collaboration tools

James Robertson has been thinking about collaboration tools. Which is interesting because I have as well. As ever, James is practical & clear in his thinking and suggests a 5 phase model (0-4) for organisations thinking about collaboration. So here are the phases and my responses to them:

Phase 0: Fragmentation
As the usage of collaboration tools grows in an unmanaged and unconsidered way, so does the "fragmentation" of information. Key information is divided into ever-smaller spaces, locked up out of broad use, generating considerable information management and knowledge management problems. (This is not a search problem.)

Agree with this - and not only the fragmentation of information but the fragmentation of activities, relationships, etc. N.B. This is bad.

Phase 1: Gardening
The starting point is to identify an overall owner for the collaboration tools, and to put in place simple governance, policies and management. Rather than trying to restrict usage, the approach is one of "gardening", helping to guide usage , connect the dots and identify best practices.

Also broadly agree with this. Except that gardening might be the wrong word. This is about identifying the existing collaboration tools within an organisation. What they are. Who uses what. What activities they are used for. And then how these different tools might fit together. And where the gaps between them might be. Something like mapping perhaps? The concept of guiding usage is critical here - "Just enough governance".

Phase 2: Business solutions
The next step is to identify key (and common) needs, and build solutions that are tailored to meet them. In this way, clear user needs can guide how to bring together different solutions (wikis, blogs, lists) into more coherent solutions. Possible targets include project collaboration, teaching or e-learning, collaborative authoring, communities of practice or research.

Nothing to disagree with here. Using the map to produce repeatable toolsets.

Phase 3: Rich networks
Organisation-wide collaboration will only be achieved with the silos are broken down between different spaces. This involves recognising the difference between "inwards" and "outwards" facing spaces, and putting in place processes for sharing and linking between them.

Now many organisations are currently in phases 0 & 1. Several are starting to move to phase 2. Are there any out there that have reached phase 3? These rich networks will almost certainly be a federated model.

Phase 4: Coherence
This is the end goal, where there is coordination between the collaboration spaces at all levels, accessed through a personalised portal-like interface. The lines between different "tools" is blurred, creating a single working environment. (There's a lot to be done before anyone can reach this state.)

I look at phase 4 and go "yeah, right". The collaboration tool space is changing very quickly at the moment. Phase 4 feels like a utopia at the moment. And given this dynamic environment, a very unlikely utopia. I think many organisations have enough on their plate trying to get to phase 3. I would feel nervous talking about phase 4 because I can just see a senior exec going: "This sounds great, I want one of these by the end of the month!" and mayhem ensuing. What is more likely in the next 1-3 years are rich networks (collaborative ecosystems) and then richer networks - with tools dropping in and out. "Coherence" feels way too static to me as a goal at the moment.

What do you think?