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GroupwareBy

Bob Travica ©1997-2000

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Team/WorkgroupGroup of organization members being interdependent in working on accomplishing a common task.

Issues:• task orientation• feeling of belonging, socio-emotional component• division of labor (roles)• interdependence• rules and norms (formalization and culture)• communication• leadership• cognitive processes (thinking, memorizing, knowledge)• democratic, critical participation vs. groupthink • equitable (fair) division of labor and rewards vs. free riding

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Kinds of Teams:

•Production team (e.g., permanent workgroup; can be self-managed)

•Project team (can be cross-functional; for project duration)

•Management team (e.g., steering committee)

•Parallel team (e.g., task force; temporary addition to existing structure)

•Ad hoc team (e.g., for decision making)

•Local (co-located) vs. Distributed Teams (virtually co-located)

Team Design

• Hierarchical-mechanistic vs flat-organic

• Technology-focused studies not always clear about team kinds & design.

Teams often defined loosely, can also mean network or community

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Groupware

• Groupware is IT for supporting workgroups/teams. Cognate concepts: Collaboration Technology, Group Support Systems

• Classification of Groupware:•Communication support Email; EBB; Awareness support for virtual teams; Boeing’s repair system; etc.)•Sharing support Storage (file); Screen (whiteboard)•Task support Decision making (GDSS); Paper authoring (e.g., e-Colabor); Software production (IBM); Conference paper mgt; etc.; procurement process (one of workflow systems)

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Study: W. Orlikowski, “Evolving from Notes: Organizational change around groupware technology”, 1994 (1996).

Application: Incident Tracking Support Systemon Lotus Notes platform

Organization: 4GL producer, among top 50 in U.S., Midwest

Findings: • opportunistic changes in distribution of work (support partners, intermediaries)• unexpected reluctance in involving partners• emergent proactive collaboration & organizational learning• unexpected amount of online communication at expense of FTF

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Study: W. Orlikowski, “Learning from Notes: Organizational issues in groupware implementation,” 1991 (1996).

Application: unspecified; messaging, bulletin boards, shared files on Lotus Notes platform

Organization: international public accounting firm

Findings: • Lotus Notes unused or used as yet another email system• many users ignorant of Lotus Notes• meager training & on individual basis• Lotus Notes understood in terms of individual tools for communication (email)/computing (Lotus 1-2-3)• culture of individual competition unsuitable for groupware

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Study: A. Failla, “Technologies for co-ordination in a software factory”, 1995 (1996)

Application: email, electronic bulletin boards/computer conferencing (“forums”), Configuration Management Version Control (CMVC)

Organization: IBM Rome Networking System Laboratory, Italy

Findings: •email used for dissemination of agendas and minutes of group meetings (opportunistic use for group coordination purpose)•forums used for exchange of technical knowledge and maintenance of less structured groups; prevalent use for individual technical tasks•concern with managers’ recognition of contribution to forums vs. willingness to participate•CMVC has coordination capabilities (e.g., automatic notification of all concerned on who’s working on related piece of code, and what code malfunctions) which are partially understood & used

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Study: C. Ciborra, “Mission critical: Challenges for groupware in a pharmaceuticalcompany”, 1993 (1996).

Application: MedNet (corporate-wide distributed repository of product data; marketing support)Cosis (laptop- and Lotus Notes-based expert system for field maintenance of diagnostic instruments)

Organization: Hoffman-La Roche, international pharmaceutical co., Switzerland

Findings: •MedNet used only as email and literature review database;

•key apps (product & clinical trail database) unreliable; •obsolete system (mid 1980s); •centralized organization problem (centralized information management)

•Cosis improved practices of sharing knowledge, war stories, notebooks;keys to success: homogeneity of user global community & focused nature of app.

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Study: C. Ciborra & G. Patriotta, “Groupware and teamwork in new product development: The case of a consumer goods multinational”, 1996

Application: Innovation Process Management (IPM)--based on innovation funnel framework--on Lotus Notes platform

Organization: Unilever (food, personal products, specialty chemicals; multinational), Italy

Findings: •development teams resist IPM because of organization problems: - development teams have too little privacy (authority redesigned: ‘below-’& ‘above-the-line’ information as result of IPM breakdown); - center-periphery relationship in innovation modified but not clarified; - maintaining above-the-line information too costly

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Study: Davenport, L., and B. Travica, "Soft Decision Support: GDSS in Loosely Affiliated ad hoc Groups ”, 1994 (1995).

Application: GroupSytems V for rent by ad hoc groups

Organization: Large University in the U.S.

Findings: • understanding of group members and processes developed• satisfaction with session• making sense of problem, needs, mission, future actions• time: from satisfaction with efficiency to feeling of premature closure

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Study: Travica, Bob, “Collaboration technology: volatile character of group decision support systems”, 1996(1998)

Application: Ventana products (GroupSytems V and Group Systems for Windows)used by professional facilitators for external clients

Organization: Large university in the U.S.

Findings: • Flow of GDSS session highly dependent on the social aspect of the system -- facilitators, users, and their interaction (Flow=time management, user behavior, decision points, sequence of tasks)• Outcomes of the session unpredictable/uncontrollable to the extent to which session flow influences outcomes

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Study: Grudin, Jonathan, “Eight challenges for developers”, Communications of the ACM, Jan. 1994, 34(1), 93-105

Application: VariousOrganization: Various

Challenges also applying to managers: •Disruption of social processes (e.g., calendar system failed because people were reluctant to acknowledge publicly that some of their meetings were low priority)

•Interdependence of payoffs (Markus & Connolly, 1990)(e.g., motivations for joining discussion forum)

•Difficult evaluation(performance dependent on a number of users and their mutual influences; group member motivation matters; takes longer time)

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Study: Ciborra, C., Groupware &Teamwork, 1996

Application: Various

Organization: Various; meta-analysis

Findings: •Users easily “drift” to substitute tools & “fragile wareness” of groupware lost•Unpredictability of outcomes (e.g., at World Bank, GDSS not used for

decision making but for “braking conspiracy of silence”, “making sense

of others and problems”)•Persistent learning (“hospitality”) necessary; learning from errors, improvisation•Ambiguity of effects (e.g., stimulating collegiality vs. increasing

managerial control over team work in progress)

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Problems Summary

• underused applications (Alpha Corp.)

• misconceptions about groupware

• unsuitable organizational culture (competitive on indiv. basis)

• lack of user training

• suppression of face-to-face by online communication (Zeta Corp.)

• concern with managers’ evaluation of contribution to group (IBM

Rome)

• disruption of existing practices

• complex assessment of benefits

• difficult evaluation

• unreliability because of irregular update (Hoffman-La Roche)

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Problems Summary (continued)• technical obsolescence due too long development time

• unsuitable organizational structure

• too little privacy for development teams (Unilever)

• centralization in innovation processes

• costly updates

• rushed users (GroupSystems V)

• unpredictable flow of GDSS sessions

• user drifting

• outcomes unpredictability

• costly learning

• ambiguous effects

• deindividuation & flaming (communication systems)

• higher overall costs of using groupware

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Benefits Summary

• beneficial changes in distribution of work

• proactive collaboration & organizational learning

• serendipitous use of email for group coordination (IBM Rome)

• knowledge sharing improvement (Cosis at Hoffman-La

Roche)

• improved understanding of group members & processes

• improved understanding of problems, courses of action

• time savings

• higher participation and valuing of decision

• support to collaboration and collegiality

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Conclusion

• Many organizations not ready for groupwork,rather than groupware

• “Wareness” of groupware is in social (organizational, group) procedures, knowledge and relationships rather than in groupware tools