More collaboration

James Dellow takes up the conversation about collaboration. James D makes the point that collaboration happens within organisations & that people will use any tools that come to hand. Absolutely agree with this. James goes on to say:

This cycle by the way is taking place at an enterprise level, but also at the level of individual workgroups, teams and projects. This leads me into another observation, that it looks like this process assumes that the collaborative technologies are in place and working but they are just not integrated in a content sense.

So James D it again right here. And it prompts me to wonder if James R's model is actually more of a maturity profile around the management of collaboration tools than about tool adoption per se.

James R meanwhile responds to both of our comments:

I certainly agree that phase 4, is a "nirvana" state and that phase 3 is the goal for the next 1-3 years. I don't believe we can even articulate what "coherence" would really look like yet, although vendors are busy promising it via their solutions. My experience, though, is that we need to "capture the high ground" in these models, explicitly including the longer-term vision. Without this, these models are too quickly ignored when a "sexier" approach comes along. My goal was also to highlight that there are three big phases that come first, before attempting to tackle phase 4...

Still, I agree that it is always dangerous to paint a picture of the "holy grail", particularly if this is taken on by over-enthusiastic senior execs. Matt, any thoughts on how to find a middle ground between the two extremes of no vision and looking too high?

So I agree that a vision is necessary but could it be more around the organisation's collaboration capabilities than a specific end state (e.g. a collaboration tool portal)? It's not so much coherence as the ability to know what tools are being used & how currently, to identify gaps in current capabilities & to look at filling those gaps, & to be proactively looking at the application of new tools.

Does the organisation know what its collaboration portfolio is? Now this portfolio might be accessed via a portal but it's actually about what the organisation can do. Now I think you could make this a compelling story but it does sound like more work than just installing a vendor product.