[COLLABORATION]

SuperheroIn theCubicleNew collaborative toolsempower employees totackle tasks with betterresults. By Virginia Citrano

Let's face it: It s not easy working fora U.S. company these days, regard-less of your job. Decentralization ispushing more tasks down, leaving

those below with more to organize, moni-tor and deliver. Communications technologymeans everyone is on call 24/7, in the office,at home, on the train, in the car. The floodof information unleashed on the Internetthat was supposed to simplify our jobshas left most of us feeling deiuged...

Most, but not all. As the Internetblossoms into Web 2.0, some work-ers and managers are discovering newtools to cope with task and data over-load: Flexible tools designed for themyriad challenges knowledge work-ers face, not just for routine tasks. Toolsthat help better manage and prtoritizework, rally the strongest team mem-bers for each job and use talent mostefficiently. Tools that help deliver workand gather feedback. And perhaps most crit-ical, tools that let only the essential infor-mation through the floodgates, in the mostuseful format.

Thanks to new collaborative tools, theseemployees have the power to do their jobsin a whole new way—a way that makes thebest use of their time and their company'sresources. It's hard to fault them for feelinga little like superheroes. capes rippling inthe wind.

c And Speaking of Weather...

* High wind and torrential rain can be the3 bane of the Federal Aviation Administration

[COLLABORATION]

this time of year. But thanks to some newcollaborative technology, the FAA is readyto handle the worst that hurrtcane season—and govemment auditors—can dish out.

If an FAA installation is knocked out bya storm, the agency relies on a team of 200volunteers to get it back on line fast. Man-agers use persona] credit cards to buy anyequipment they need to make repairs. That'smuch faster than govemment procurementchannels, but it used to leave a messy trailfor 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 simplyoverrun as larger companies such as Micro-soft, IBM and Google push deeper into theworld of collaborative technology. What'smore, even the best collaborative tools willbe moot if a company fails to build a cultureof collaboration around them.

But these collaborative technologies arethe seeds of the next Web revolution. Busi-ness strategists Don Tapscott and AnthonyD. Williams coined the term "wikinomics"and published a book by that name in 2006to sum up the business dynamics of the toolsthat will make leaders of the companies that

''You can go upstream with thesolution 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 messagingchats and related items to a central archive.

That may sound trivial, but by relyingon technology to gather and store the dataauditors will require later, the DisasterResponse Team frees up time to concentrateon critical repair decisions now.

The collaborative technology the FAAuses to empower its workers is sometimescalled social computing; other terms, ofcourse, include blog, wiki and mashup. Thesetechnologies aren't replacing corporate col-laborative applications and databases, atleast not yet. But they are proving an easy,inexpensive way to get work done, oftenwithout the help of the IT department.

Most of these Web tools are only in theearly stages of development, and most com-panies behind them are start-ups. Somewill 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 indeedopportunities for collaborative technology,though by 2009 fewer than 30 percent ofFortune 1000 companies will have enter-prise social software platforms in place.

Established collaboration tools work wellon formal processes, according to Gartnerresearch director Nikos Drakos. But whenthe work requires more give and take, orthe process doesn't warrant formalizing,workers fall back on e-mail, telephone andinstant messaging.

"The problem there is that everythingthat happens in those systems is invis-ible to everybody else," Drakos says. Thatdoesn't make them effective tools for masscollaboration.

Or easy to manage. Just ask Chris Mat-thews how many e-mails he used to fieldbefore he implemented some collaborativetechnology.

Matthews is the global marketing inte-grations manager for Specialized Bicycle,whose bikes are ridden by some of theworld's top road and mountain bike raceteams. As such, he finds himself coordinat-ing marketing efforts in seven countrtesand almost as many languages, a task thatused to demand hundreds of e-mails.

About a year ago, Matthews switchedhis team to an interactive spreadsheetfrom Smartsheet.com, a software-as-a-service provider. Now Specialized Bicyclemarketing staffers in Canada and Francecan share translation tasks. For instance,one column is designated for Englishwith additional columns each reservedfor other languages. This way. Matthewsdoesn't get three different French transla-tions e-mailed back from speakers of thatlanguage.

But Matthews says the real advan-tage of Smartsheet is the ability to includeother people, even the CEO, in the decision-making process. "You can go upstream v^tha solution a heck of a lot more easily thanbefore," he says. "That alone makes thingsso much better for everybody. Your teamfeels like they have been part of the solu-tion and the guys above you feel they havea smart team that can do the work."

Best yet, the new tool costs Specializedjust S25 a month, which lets users createup to 100 Smartsheets. There are threeother paid pricing plans, which top out atS149 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 biggerjobs, however. Consider all the data HansjeGoid-Krueck has to gather for her job.

Gold-Krueck is human dimensions spe-cialist and technical program leader atthe Coastal Services Center, the unit of theUS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration responsible for managinglocal coastal resources. The center partnersin more than 100 projects.

But to fully understand the scope of Gold-Krueck's job. multiply those 100 projects bythe need to assess, for each, the social, cul-tural and political aspects of managingpublic land resources. Then multiply thatby the fact that the information she needsto make that assessment is housed all overthe country, and some of it has never beenformally published.

To gather and clearly see the points ofconvergence in all that data, Goid-Krueck'sdepartment turned to mashup softwarefrom Kapow Technologies. The Web 2.0Mashup Server software lets users gatherdata, regardless of format (straight text,spreadsheets. Web pages, RSS feeds and thelike), from intemal and external sources,combine that data and redeploy it in entirelynew ways, such as an information-denseand highly searchable Web site. The site letspeople working on other coastal protectioninitiatives find research on simiiar initia-tives in other locales. The Kapow MashupServer 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 CoastalServices Center notifies the organizationswhose reports are pulled into the site (andcredits them in the entries), she notes there'sno need or obligation to do so. "The Kapowtechnology is completely non-invasive." shesays. "We don't need to talk to their IT people."

' That is a key selling point. Most of theseservices are so lightweight they can beimplemented and used without help froman IT pro. Many of the small vendors maketheir products available as a service overthe Web, so they can be purchased on aproject basis and not subject to the scrutinythat usually accompanies a decision to buy

enterprise software. "There is an elementof instant gratification here," says Gart-ner's Drakos. He cautions, however, that asthe use of collaborative tools becomes morewidespread, there will be larger questionsabout managing content and risk, and moreneed for an IT department to integrate theproducts with existing systems.

That's where the big companies like IBMmay have an edge. Giora Hadar. the FAA'sknowledge architect, says the FAA wentwith IBM Lotus Connections over other col-laborative technologies because the FAAwas already an IBM shop, using Lotus Notes,

hands- They needed an organized informa-tion source that could evolve as fast as theirbusiness needs did. But Nugent wantedsomething that would complement, notreplace, its format service channel.

That led her to Near-Time, a hostedservice that can be used to build wikisand btogs, share files, create podcasts andhandle RSS feeds, Near-Time's principalshad co-founded Extensibility, an XML solu-tions provider acquired by Tibco Softwarein 2OO2. Near-Time's plans for corporateusers range from S700 to 5,000 a year.All plans include an unlimited number of

"[The wiki] empowered us to consideralternatives ... by broadening the group/'__

. - —Geoffrey Corbjohns Hopkins University

Domino and Sametime for instant mes-saging and Web conferencing. But a bigcompany product doesn't necessarily carry abig company price tag: Activities, the singleLotus Connections product the FAA uses.has a list price of $55 a user for a perpetuallicense; the full Connections suite costs Snoa user. Hadar says the Disaster ResponseTeam, which is spread across the U,S,, is con-sidering all the Connections components tosee how they can be applied to its work.

Far-flung teams prove to be some of thebiggest fans of these new tools. Take thefolks at NetScout Systems, which makesintegrated network performance manage-ment solutions. The company, which hassome 3.000 enterprise customers aroundthe planet, needed something to help usershelp themselves.

June Nugent. NetScout's director ofknowledge resources, realized that membersof the company's user group—network man-agers—didn't have much free time on their

wikis. blogs and other content tools for anunlimited number of users, but the higher-value plans include analytics, storage.bandwidth and other features as well.

Nugent's team has used Near-Time toaeate tutonals on best practices and to facili-tate training. Instructors use the tool to postpreparatory work for classes, and studentsuse it to post questions after the classes, "Theresult," says Nugent, "is a richer communica-tion channel with our customers."

It's important for companies to createnew, informal channels hetween themand their users, "in no small part to helpthe former see what the latter needs andcares about," Nugent says. The Near-Timewiki tool helps NetScout do just that. "Weare definitely extending our footprint fortraining," she says.

When Users Resist

Alas, some IT professionals learn thehard way that even the sharpest collab-

orative tools can be blunted if users failto foster a collaborative culture. GeoffreyCorb, 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 trackdiscussions between Johns Hopkins andother schools that were implementing thesame student information system. But theinteraction needed between the schoolsjust wasn't there, and the implementationfailed.

Undaunted. Corb refocused his useof Confluence on managing the imple-mentation of the student system withinHopkins, He then set out to make thewiki the exclusive place for content onthe project. But this time, he took smallsteps, not giant ones: "Instead of sendingan agenda for a meeting around by e-mail," he says, "we would put the agendaup in the wiki and send out a notice thatit was there." Little by little, contributorsbecame familiar with the wiki and beganto produce more content for it.

The productivity of Corb's IT team hasincreased since it started using Conflu-ence. "It has empowered us to not justmake decisions," he says, "but to consideralternatives that might otherwise havenot made it to the table by broadening thegroup suggesting alternatives."

Johns Hopkins fully implemented thestudent information system, which coversall students in each of the uruversity's nineschools, in July, two years after the projectstarted. Corb contemplates using Conflu-ence to manage work on a new coursemanagement system. Better yet. some ofthe departments involved in the studentinformation system are using Confluence

on their own projects, "We're encouragingmore of that," Corb says, "because it allowsus to see what's going on in the minds oftheir constituents."

And what employee or manager couldn'tbenefit from that kind of X-ray vision?

Please send questions and comments about thisarticle to editors@cioinsight-ziffdavis.com.

Five Keys toSuccessful Use ofCollaborative Tools• Don't Allow Anonymity: Chances

for polite, productive collaboration

are greater if users' names andreputations are on the line.

^ Managers Must Manage

Collaboration,Too: Even in Wikipedia's

free-flowing editing environment,super-users occasionally step in toresolve problems.

• Dole Out Responsibility: A wikl-workethic won't develop overnight, but youcan speed the process along by givingusers a clear stake in its growth.

• Think Wiki: Encourage usersto think about the many waysthey collaborate—formally andinformaily—every day.

• Think About What's Not Wiki:

Not everything your company doesis a candidate for collaboration. Setappropriate boundaries.

S0UKE:CARINE1I