New Wave Collaboration New Wave Collaboration andandEnterprise 2.0Enterprise 2.0

Daniel J. Pritchett, Daniel J. Pritchett, Sharing at Work

TopicsTopics

• Knowledge Transfer vs. Knowledge Management vs. Expert Location

• “Above the flow” vs. “in the flow” collaboration

• Expert Location and the Social Graph• Portable Identity• Multi-faceted collaboration tools• Activity Streams and communities of

practice• Highs and lows of email-based

collaboration• Consumer analogues• Innovation Management• Profiles of other corporate collaboration

initiatives

About MeAbout Me• “Workplace collaboration” blogger

• Writing at Sharingatwork.com for a year now

• daniel@sharingatwork.com• Active on Friendfeed (/dpritchett) and

Twitter (@dpritchett)

• Business Intelligence Solution Developer• Joined a Fortune 100 manufacturer in

2005 after graduate school• Four years in the IT services group:• Two years of report development for the

supply chain project• One year of ETL automation for the

supply chain project• One year of business intelligence

development

Knowledge Transfer vs. Knowledge Knowledge Transfer vs. Knowledge Management vs. Expert LocationManagement vs. Expert Location

Knowledge transfer (KT) is a series of one-time obligations◦ Training for new hires, consultants, & transfers◦ Document responsibilities for one’s position◦ Top-down dissemination of corporate

strategies Knowledge management (KM) is a

continuous improvement strategy◦ Automatically capture workflows and explicit

knowledge Expert location bridges the gaps:

◦ Which of the thousands of other company employees in Memphis knows what I need to know to solve this new problem?

◦ Provides access to “tacit knowledge”

KM: In the flow vs. above the KM: In the flow vs. above the flowflow Key concept for collaboration change

management Above the flow collaboration tools are

standalone destinations◦ Wikipedia model provides a monolithic data

repository. Think document stores in team rooms or shared file folders

◦ Can be viewed by employees as unnecessary to daily work

In the flow collaboration tools are tightly integrated with daily work tasks◦ Think help ticket systems. Outlook/Domino/Web

services generate email alerts and allow flexible reporting for metrics and exception handling

◦ Unavoidable due to workflow integration and visible metrics

How do we facilitate expert How do we facilitate expert location today?location today?Tenure with company affords

contacts and experience across many business units◦Ask a company veteran to point you in

the right directionHighly connected employees are

extremely valuable but they are also bottlenecks as they can only work so many hours in a day

HR maintains a skills inventory; employees don’t use it for non-HR activities

How can we improve expert How can we improve expert location?location?

Public skills inventory (LinkedIn style)

Portable identities

Activity streams

My Portable IdentityMy Portable Identity

LDAP (using our Active Directory accounts) allows portable identities within enterprises

Active Directory profiles lack the descriptive depth of LinkedIn and Facebook

Reusing portable Reusing portable identitiesidentities

Social GraphSocial Graph“The global mapping of everybody and

how they’re related” – Brad Fitzpatrick, Google

Facebook aims to map this graph and provide services utilizing the connections

Org charts are only part of the picture◦Aside from your current chain of command you

might know plenty of people from previous teams

◦Ad-hoc workgroups cross team boundaries - think mergers and IT asset cutovers required, full-time month-long design doc “caves”

Why do we use email as our Why do we use email as our primary connection?primary connection?

Decision makers and mobile employees don’t have the luxury of a web-based workflow

E-mail archiving and security best practices are well known

Lowest common denominator

The problem with The problem with how we sometimes use email Imagine a design doc in

progress…

Why choose between email between email or wikis?or wikis?

Example:Example:MicrobloggingMicroblogging

ImmediateConversationalEminently

searchable“In the flow”Team borders

are optionalMashups come

naturally

Multiple access pointsMultiple access points

RSS and portable streams and portable streams

Publishing an XML version of the stream allows reuse with other tools

Meet employees where they are already comfortable

Consume info with RSS Consume info with RSS widgetswidgets

Interact via Instant Interact via Instant MessageMessage

Email as an alert systemEmail as an alert system

Topical tracking Topical tracking with keywordswith keywords

Interact via EmailInteract via Email 

What are email’s strong What are email’s strong points?points?UniversalAsynchronousInstantSearchable archivesAlertsAutomationPersonal knowledge baseFew technical surprises

Email as a personal Email as a personal knowledge baseknowledge base

Where does email let us Where does email let us down?down?Unnecessary duplication of

informationThreaded conversations can be hard

to unravelGetting latecomers up to speed on a

discussion is difficultPrivate by default – implicit loss of

work historyOpaque personal knowledge bases

limit potential for others to benefit from your workflow

Innovation ManagementInnovation Management

Innovation tool vendor: Innovation tool vendor: SpigitSpigit

Collaboration initiatives at Collaboration initiatives at other corporationsother corporations

Deloitte’s D StreetDeloitte’s D Street“Wanted to make a large company

feel smaller”Average age of employees is 28“more easily offer flexible work

arrangements, establish virtual teams, bring new employees up to speed, improve collaboration and increase retention”

Pre-populated Facebook-style profiles

Lockheed’s “Unity” Lockheed’s “Unity” communitycommunity54,000 US employees onlineSharePoint 3.0 + Active Directory

+ Google search appliancePost personal information such as

hobbies, interests and bios with photos

"The women's group asked for it to be open internationally”

Lockheed is working on a social-networking policy but today blocks access to most of the popular public social-networking sites.

United Business Media uses United Business Media uses Jive SBSJive SBSWorks out of the box – community was

online literally within one day of signing contract

Jive provides a standalone community with bookmarks, blogs, RSS widgets,

Not a SharePoint replacement, rather a community building complement

Tips: Log and brag about community “wins”, hold adoption contests, add polls and discussions to any announcements when possible

Wachovia uses SharePointWachovia uses SharePointStaged rollout plan: 1,000 in

December, 10,000 in Feb, all 120,000 by the end of 2008.

Acronym definition wiki quickly grew to 900 entries

Piloting per-project wiki program“Ultimately, Wachovia plans to

extend its Enterprise 2.0 network to customers and business partners, but carefully and gradually.”

What’s coming up?What’s coming up?SharePoint 2010Google WaveContinued rise of Software as a

ServiceNew applications leveraging social

graphsGreater focus on activity streams

and alertsExtend communities to embrace

customers and suppliers

Questions and discussionQuestions and discussion

Contact me @dpritchett on Twitter or as daniel@sharingatwork.com