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CheckPoint Technological Advancements in Communication |
Write a 200- to 300-word response to the following questions based on “Superhero in the Cubicle” in the Electronic Reserve Readings:
· What technological advancements in communication were discussed in the article? · Choose two communication types and compare and contrast them. How could these be used in your workplace? · Do these technological advancements in communication follow what is traditionally considered business communication? Why?
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[COLLABORATION]
Superhero
In the
Cubicle
New collaborative tools
empower employees to
tackle tasks with better
results. By Virginia Citrano
L
et’s face it: It s not easy working for
a U.S. company these days, regard-
less of your job. Decentralization is
pushing more tasks down, leaving
those below with more to organize, moni-
tor and deliver. Communications technology
means everyone is on call 24/7, in the office,
at home, on the train, in the car. The flood
of information unleashed on the Internet
that was supposed to simplify our jobs
has left most of us feeling deiuged…
Most, but not all. As the Internet
blossoms into Web 2.0, some work-
ers and managers are discovering new
tools to cope with task and data over-
load: Flexible tools designed for the
myriad challenges knowledge work-
ers face, not just for routine tasks. Tools
that help better manage and prtoritize
work, rally the strongest team mem-
bers for each job and use talent most
efficiently. Tools that help deliver work
and gather feedback. And perhaps most crit-
ical, tools that let only the essential infor-
mation through the floodgates, in the most
useful format.
Thanks to new collaborative tools, these
employees have the power to do their jobs
in a whole new way—a way that makes the
best use of their time and their company’s
resources. It’s hard to fault them for feeling
a little like superheroes. capes rippling in
the wind.
c And Speaking of Weather…
* High wind and torrential rain can be the
3 bane of the Federal Aviation Administration
[COLLABORATION]
this time of year. But thanks to some new
collaborative technology, the FAA is ready
to handle the worst that hurrtcane season—
and govemment auditors—can dish out.
If an FAA installation is knocked out by
a storm, the agency relies on a team of 200
volunteers to get it back on line fast. Man-
agers use persona] credit cards to buy any
equipment they need to make repairs. That’s
much faster than govemment procurement
channels, but it used to leave a messy trail
for auditors. Now. however, the FAA’s Disas-
ter Response Team uses IBM Lotus Connec-
tions, a new Web-based tool from Big Blue
will be acquired, and some may be simply
overrun as larger companies such as Micro-
soft, IBM and Google push deeper into the
world of collaborative technology. What’s
more, even the best collaborative tools will
be moot if a company fails to build a culture
of collaboration around them.
But these collaborative technologies are
the seeds of the next Web revolution. Busi-
ness strategists Don Tapscott and Anthony
D. Williams coined the term “wikinomics”
and published a book by that name in 2006
to sum up the business dynamics of the tools
that will make leaders of the companies that
”You can go upstream with the
solution a heck of a Jot faster than before.”
^_-=:Chds.Matthews^ specialized Bicycle
that combines record-keeping, blogging,
bookmarking and more. Using this appli-
cation, workers can easily file all receipts,
forms, e-mail, voicemail. instant messaging
chats and related items to a central archive.
That may sound trivial, but by relying
on technology to gather and store the data
auditors will require later, the Disaster
Response Team frees up time to concentrate
on critical repair decisions now.
The collaborative technology the FAA
uses to empower its workers is sometimes
called social computing; other terms, of
course, include blog, wiki and mashup. These
technologies aren’t replacing corporate col-
laborative applications and databases, at
least not yet. But they are proving an easy,
inexpensive way to get work done, often
without the help of the IT department.
Most of these Web tools are only in the
early stages of development, and most com-
panies behind them are start-ups. Some
will never get out of the starting gate, some
adopt them—and laggards of the rest.
IT adviser Gartner is more measured
in its approach, saying there are indeed
opportunities for collaborative technology,
though by 2009 fewer than 30 percent of
Fortune 1000 companies will have enter-
prise social software platforms in place.
Established collaboration tools work well
on formal processes, according to Gartner
research director Nikos Drakos. But when
the work requires more give and take, or
the process doesn’t warrant formalizing,
workers fall back on e-mail, telephone and
instant messaging.
“The problem there is that everything
that happens in those systems is invis-
ible to everybody else,” Drakos says. That
doesn’t make them effective tools for mass
collaboration.
Or easy to manage. Just ask Chris Mat-
thews how many e-mails he used to field
before he implemented some collaborative
technology.
Matthews is the global marketing inte-
grations manager for Specialized Bicycle,
whose bikes are ridden by some of the
world’s top road and mountain bike race
teams. As such, he finds himself coordinat-
ing marketing efforts in seven countrtes
and almost as many languages, a task that
used to demand hundreds of e-mails.
About a year ago, Matthews switched
his team to an interactive spreadsheet
from Smartsheet.com, a software-as-a-
service provider. Now Specialized Bicycle
marketing staffers in Canada and France
can share translation tasks. For instance,
one column is designated for English
with additional columns each reserved
for other languages. This way. Matthews
doesn’t get three different French transla-
tions e-mailed back from speakers of that
language.
But Matthews says the real advan-
tage of Smartsheet is the ability to include
other people, even the CEO, in the decision-
making process. “You can go upstream v^th
a solution a heck of a lot more easily than
before,” he says. “That alone makes things
so much better for everybody. Your team
feels like they have been part of the solu-
tion and the guys above you feel they have
a smart team that can do the work.”
Best yet, the new tool costs Specialized
just S25 a month, which lets users create
up to 100 Smartsheets. There are three
other paid pricing plans, which top out at
S149 a month for 1,000 spreadsheets.
Low-Cost Doesn’t Mean “Cheap”
Small prices don’t mean these Web collab-
orative technologies can’t handle bigger
jobs, however. Consider all the data Hansje
Goid-Krueck has to gather for her job.
Gold-Krueck is human dimensions spe-
cialist and technical program leader at
the Coastal Services Center, the unit of the
US, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration responsible for managing
local coastal resources. The center partners
in more than 100 projects.
But to fully understand the scope of Gold-
Krueck’s job. multiply those 100 projects by
the need to assess, for each, the social, cul-
tural and political aspects of managing
public land resources. Then multiply that
by the fact that the information she needs
to make that assessment is housed all over
the country, and some of it has never been
formally published.
To gather and clearly see the points of
convergence in all that data, Goid-Krueck’s
department turned to mashup software
from Kapow Technologies. The Web 2.0
Mashup Server software lets users gather
data, regardless of format (straight text,
spreadsheets. Web pages, RSS feeds and the
like), from intemal and external sources,
combine that data and redeploy it in entirely
new ways, such as an information-dense
and highly searchable Web site. The site lets
people working on other coastal protection
initiatives find research on simiiar initia-
tives in other locales. The Kapow Mashup
Server is at the high end of the new collab-
orative technologies being built off the Web:
The cost of a full enterprise version starts at
$50,000.
And while Gold-Krueck says the Coastal
Services Center notifies the organizations
whose reports are pulled into the site (and
credits them in the entries), she notes there’s
no need or obligation to do so. “The Kapow
technology is completely non-invasive.” she
says. “We don’t need to talk to their IT people.”
‘ That is a key selling point. Most of these
services are so lightweight they can be
implemented and used without help from
an IT pro. Many of the small vendors make
their products available as a service over
the Web, so they can be purchased on a
project basis and not subject to the scrutiny
that usually accompanies a decision to buy
enterprise software. “There is an element
of instant gratification here,” says Gart-
ner’s Drakos. He cautions, however, that as
the use of collaborative tools becomes more
widespread, there will be larger questions
about managing content and risk, and more
need for an IT department to integrate the
products with existing systems.
That’s where the big companies like IBM
may have an edge. Giora Hadar. the FAA’s
knowledge architect, says the FAA went
with IBM Lotus Connections over other col-
laborative technologies because the FAA
was already an IBM shop, using Lotus Notes,
hands- They needed an organized informa-
tion source that could evolve as fast as their
business needs did. But Nugent wanted
something that would complement, not
replace, its format service channel.
That led her to Near-Time, a hosted
service that can be used to build wikis
and btogs, share files, create podcasts and
handle RSS feeds, Near-Time’s principals
had co-founded Extensibility, an XML solu-
tions provider acquired by Tibco Software
in 2OO2. Near-Time’s plans for corporate
users range from S700 to 5,000 a year.
All plans include an unlimited number of
“[The wiki] empowered us to consider
alternatives … by broadening the group/’__
. – —Geoffrey Corbjohns Hopkins University
Domino and Sametime for instant mes-
saging and Web conferencing. But a big
company product doesn’t necessarily carry a
big company price tag: Activities, the single
Lotus Connections product the FAA uses.
has a list price of $55 a user for a perpetual
license; the full Connections suite costs Sno
a user. Hadar says the Disaster Response
Team, which is spread across the U,S,, is con-
sidering all the Connections components to
see how they can be applied to its work.
Far-flung teams prove to be some of the
biggest fans of these new tools. Take the
folks at NetScout Systems, which makes
integrated network performance manage-
ment solutions. The company, which has
some 3.000 enterprise customers around
the planet, needed something to help users
help themselves.
June Nugent. NetScout’s director of
knowledge resources, realized that members
of the company’s user group—network man-
agers—didn’t have much free time on their
wikis. blogs and other content tools for an
unlimited number of users, but the higher-
value plans include analytics, storage.
bandwidth and other features as well.
Nugent’s team has used Near-Time to
aeate tutonals on best practices and to facili-
tate training. Instructors use the tool to post
preparatory work for classes, and students
use it to post questions after the classes, “The
result,” says Nugent, “is a richer communica-
tion channel with our customers.”
It’s important for companies to create
new, informal channels hetween them
and their users, “in no small part to help
the former see what the latter needs and
cares about,” Nugent says. The Near-Time
wiki tool helps NetScout do just that. “We
are definitely extending our footprint for
training,” she says.
When Users Resist
Alas, some IT professionals learn the
hard way that even the sharpest collab-
orative tools can be blunted if users fail
to foster a collaborative culture. Geoffrey
Corb, director of IT for student informa-
tion systems at The Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity in Baltimore, had that unfortu-
nate experience.
Corb was an early user of JIRA, an issue-
tracking tool from Atlassian. When Atlas-
sian expanded to a wiki product. Conflu-
ence, Corb thought he’d use it to track
discussions between Johns Hopkins and
other schools that were implementing the
same student information system. But the
interaction needed between the schools
just wasn’t there, and the implementation
failed.
Undaunted. Corb refocused his use
of Confluence on managing the imple-
mentation of the student system within
Hopkins, He then set out to make the
wiki the exclusive place for content on
the project. But this time, he took small
steps, not giant ones: “Instead of sending
an agenda for a meeting around by e-
mail,” he says, “we would put the agenda
up in the wiki and send out a notice that
it was there.” Little by little, contributors
became familiar with the wiki and began
to produce more content for it.
The productivity of Corb’s IT team has
increased since it started using Conflu-
ence. “It has empowered us to not just
make decisions,” he says, “but to consider
alternatives that might otherwise have
not made it to the table by broadening the
group suggesting alternatives.”
Johns Hopkins fully implemented the
student information system, which covers
all students in each of the uruversity’s nine
schools, in July, two years after the project
started. Corb contemplates using Conflu-
ence to manage work on a new course
management system. Better yet. some of
the departments involved in the student
information system are using Confluence
on their own projects, “We’re encouraging
more of that,” Corb says, “because it allows
us to see what’s going on in the minds of
their constituents.”
And what employee or manager couldn’t
benefit from that kind of X-ray vision?
Please send questions and comments about this
article to editors@cioinsight-ziffdavis.com.
Five Keys to
Successful Use of
Collaborative Tools
• Don’t Allow Anonymity: Chances
for polite, productive collaboration
are greater if users’ names and
reputations are on the line.
^ Managers Must Manage
Collaboration,Too: Even in Wikipedia’s
free-flowing editing environment,
super-users occasionally step in to
resolve problems.
• Dole Out Responsibility: A wikl-work
ethic won’t develop overnight, but you
can speed the process along by giving
users a clear stake in its growth.
• Think Wiki: Encourage users
to think about the many ways
they collaborate—formally and
informaily—every day.
• Think About What’s Not Wiki:
Not everything your company does
is a candidate for collaboration. Set
appropriate boundaries.
S0UKE:CARINE1I
