Whitepaper Web based collaboration support for dis

Transcription

Whitepaper
Web based collaboration support for distributed project teams: a view of the field *
March 2003
Dr. Christoph Meier
Fraunhofer-Institut für
Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation
Nobelstrasse 12
70569 Stuttgart
Tel.: 0711/970-2218
E-Mail: [email protected]
* The work reported on here was in large part supported by the UNITE project (www.unite-porject.org, EU-IST 2000-25436).
Web based collaboration support
Content
SUMMARY...............................................................................................................................................................2
1
THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATION ......................................................................2
2
DIMENSIONS FOR DIFFERENTIATING COLLABORATION SUPPORT SYSTEMS ......................5
3
BROWSER-BASED COLLABORATION: AVAILABLE SOLUTIONS................................................13
4
UNITE AND THE CASE FOR AN OPEN AND EXTENDABLE APPROACH.....................................18
5
A FINAL NOTE: COLLABORATION SUPPORT GOING MS OFFICE - THE END OF
GROUPWARE?.............................................................................................................................................25
6
REFERENCES...............................................................................................................................................26
© Fraunhofer-IAO / IAT-Universität Stuttgart, 2003
1
Summary
This report emerged out of work performed in the course of the research project "UNITE – ubiquitous and integrated teamwork environment" (EU-IST 200025436). It starts out by looking at elements of successful co-operation and proposes communication, common ground and co-ordination as key success factors. Subsequently, several dimensions along which collaboration support systems can be distinguished are introduced and discussed. In particular, these are
the users targeted, the type of application and the modes of communication
and collaboration supported. In the next section the range of currently available
solutions for browser-based team collaboration is indicated by briefly presenting four selected products. Following this, an innovative solution representing a
more open and extendable approach (UNITE) is presented. Based on a preliminary comparison with currently available solutions integrating support for both
synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, the merits of the UNITE approach
are pointed out. This report ends with a brief note about possible future developments related to recent acquisitions by Microsoft that may eventually lead to
the disappearance of groupware as a software product in itself and its integration in regular office and personal productivity suites.
1
The elements of successful collaboration
In order to provide a reference framework in which existing solutions for collaboration support1 can be meaningfully compared and positioned, it is neces-
1
The term "collaboration support" is preferred to "groupware" for a number of reasons. The most important one is that the term
groupware poses problems with respect to its differentiation from "teamware" and "community solutions". Groupware (often
also referred to as a computer-supported cooperative work -- CSCW – application) denotes a system based on software (and occa-
2
sary to briefly clarify the concept of collaboration and what it takes for success
in collaboration.
Collaborative work, put generally, is the joint pursuit of a shared goal in a more
or less planned way. This may take place at the level of individuals, for example
when two colleagues jointly draft and write a proposal, a business plan or a report. Collaborative work also takes place at the level of teams, for example in a
project on software development of the development of a new pharmaceutical
drug. Finally, collaboration also takes place at the level of organisations, for example if several partner companies join up to develop and market a complex
product that neither partner could succeed with alone.
Frequently, collaboration systems are positioned in a three dimensional space
identified by the dimensions "communication", "co-operation" and "coordination" (cf. Figure 1).
sionally also hardware) to support co-operative and collaborative work, Lotus Notes being the archetype. Over the last couple of
years numerous solutions have emerged that provide similar functionality based on a browser and the WWW and are referred to
as web-based digital workplaces for teams and extended enterprises or teamware for short. Community solutions, finally, while
also supporting co-operative work in a limited way, focus mostly on providing a place for communication and exchange among
members and can also be employed in relationship management between employees, customers, and business partners (see Bullinger et al. 2002).
3
Figure 1:
Dimensions of collaboration support and the positioning of selected tools (adapted from
Teufel et al. 1995, p. 27)
Rather than following this model, here a slightly different conception of collaborative work is employed. In this conception, successful cooperation or collaborative work is based on communication, common ground (alternatively
termed knowledge integration) and coordination (see Figure 2). Speaking a
common language (both in a linguistic and in a figurative way) and having
available channels of communication (e.g. telephone, fax, email etc.) are important prerequisites for efficient collaborative work. While easy and extensive
communication usually contributes to the development of common ground
within a project team, such common ground is an important success factor in
its own right. Collaborative work will proceed much more efficient and
smoothly if participants have a common and shared understanding of their
goals and of the various activities and processes through which they will pursue
these goals. Finally, coordination is another key success factor in collaborative
work. Participants need to communicate, agree and know about who is doing
what when where and how (cf. Steinheider et al. 1999).
4
Figure 2: Levels at which collaboration takes place and success factors
2
Dimensions for differentiating collaboration support systems
Just as there are different drivers for the developments summarised in the introduction, there also are different approaches to providing collaboration support. In order to differentiate these approaches, one can look at the technological and technical characteristics of collaboration support systems, for example, the kind of architecture that solutions are built on or the programming
languages that are employed. Rather than taking technical and technological
aspects as a point of departure, this discussion takes a more business and user
oriented perspective. The differentiating dimensions considered here relate to,
for example, the targeted users, the type of application or the kind of collaborative activities supported (see Figure 3).
5
Figure 3: Selected dimensions for distinguishing collaboration support systems
1. Collaboration support for organisations, teams, communities,
meetings or individuals
A first consideration is at what level collaboration support is provided. A
particular solution may provide support at the level of
a. organisations
b. projects / teams
c. communities
d. meetings
e. individuals
At the organisational level, solutions like, e.g., access to process or production data via EDI or the recently much talked about Web-Services (based on
SOAP, WSDL and an UDDI registry) can support collaboration and transactions between different businesses.
At the project level, groupware or conferencing solutions can support work
performed by a team of experts (either from one or from several different
organisations). These are at the focus of this review and are discussed more
extensively in the subsequent sections.
Teams usually have a stable and restricted membership over a long time
and regular participation of all members in the joint work. Membership in
communities, by contrast, usually is more fluid and participation more variable, frequently not being based on a common goal or task. Solutions for
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electronic communities, therefore, usually focus on asynchronous communication functions such as discussion forums. Also, these solutions typically
provide different views on the information available corresponding to the
different roles that members occupy and frequently allow access to part of
this information by a more general public. Prominent examples of community solutions are Cassiopeia or Vignette.
Figure 4:
Screenshots of a collaboration solution combined with a community platform
On the left, the internal view with team collaboration functions can be seen; on the right, one thematic channel is displayed as it would be visible to a community member (see www.mybusinesscommunities.biz)
Many meeting support systems usually do not provide differentiated role or
membership categories. Rather, collaboration support is provided on an adhoc basis and each meeting is usually organised as a one-time affair (see,
for example, PlaceWare or WebEx).
At the personal or job function level, finally, collaboration support typically
targets interpersonal communication and co-operative working on closely
delineated data sets or file formats. Two basic approaches and fields of application can be distinguished. One is to provide collaboration functions via
applications or dedicated tools to members within the same organisation
(e.g., an engineer sharing and jointly editing a CAD file with a colleague).
Another approach is to build collaboration services into Web sites serving
customers or visitors, allowing them, for example, to click on a button in
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order to initiate a telephone or PC-conferencing call to a customer service
representative.
The focus in this state-of-the-art review is on collaboration support for distributed work groups and project teams. In consequence, a range of systems that primarily target individuals, communities or entire organisations
are not discussed.
2. Collaboration support as part of applications vs. collaboration
support as a separate tool
Another differentiating dimension for collaboration support tools relates to
the question of how collaboration support is provided. If the goal is to assist users of particular applications to work on a document co-operatively,
then it makes sense to provide collaboration features as part of, for example, a mind mapping tool (e.g., MindManager), a CAD tool (e.g., AutoCAD), a document management tool (e.g., OpenText), or even basic personal productivity software (e.g., Microsoft Office XP). If, on the other
hand, the goal is to assist members of a distributed team in co-ordinating
their work and in jointly working through different phases of a project,
then indeed a dedicated collaboration support solution is most appropriate.
Over the course of the last decades years, a number of solutions for supporting collaborative work among distributed team members have
emerged. These comprise single tools such as, e.g., email but also so-called
groupware solutions which provide a more integrated set of functionalities.
A very prominent representative of this class of solutions is Lotus Notes
which was released in 1990. Lotus Notes integrates a messaging / email
component with shared databases for documents, addresses or other kinds
of information and, at the same time, provides a development environment
with which customised solutions can be created. Microsofts Outlook / Exchange represents a somewhat similar approach (Wilczek / Krcmar 2001)
and is also a popular groupware solution.
3. Support for synchronous collaboration vs. support for asynchronous collaboration
A major differentiator for collaboration support systems is a focus either on
synchronous collaboration or on asynchronous collaboration (Teufel et al.
1995, p. 25). Typical features for supporting synchronous collaboration are
audio- and video communication, a whiteboard for joint scribbling or draw-
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ing in real time or the joint editing of documents. Typical features that support asynchronous collaboration are a messaging component, a To Do list,
a shared calendar and a document repository.
Until recently, most of the numerous collaboration support systems available were located on either one or the other of these two sides. Microsoft
NetMeeting, a popular solution for point-to-point audio- and videoconferencing, for example, is firmly on the side of synchronous collaboration (see
"PC-based audio-, video- and data conferencing in Figure 5). It provides for
audio- and video communication, a whiteboard and the shared editing of
documents but does not provide, for example, a document repository. Lotus Notes, on the other hand, which has long been synonymous with
groupware, is located firmly on the side of asynchronous collaboration support, providing for messaging, calendaring, To-Do lists and shared repositories but not for conferencing.2
Figure 5: The range of collaboration support systems available
2
Both solutions have been complemented by other products that enhance the kind of support they can provide. In combination
with a Microsoft Exchange Server and a Microsoft Exchange Conferencing Server, meeting planning and management via the Outlook client is possible as is multipoint audio and video conferencing. Lotus Notes, in combination with Lotus Sametime, can support sychnronous collaboration as well as asynchronous collaboration, while Teamroom provides a document repository, todo list,
reminders, etc.
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In order to support collaboration in a project across its entire life cycle, different components or systems have to be combined – at least at the current
time. Establishing contact and communication, a prime task in early stages
of a project, is supported well enough by email and instant messaging.
When goals have been defined and tasks distributed among team members, groupware solutions with features such as a document repository, a
shared address book and calendar or support for basic workflows (such as
submit – review – publish) are most useful. For meetings among geographically distributed team members conferencing solutions are most appropriate (see Figure 6). Web-conferencing solutions (see below, paragraph 4) offer not only a wide range of functionalities (e.g., application sharing,
whiteboarding, shared browsing) but also support conferencing with larger
numbers of participants, for example in case of formal presentations. Compared to PC-based conferencing which requires client software such as MS
NetMeeting to be installed on a computer, web-conferencing solutions can
be used with only a browser and internet access.
Figure 6:
Phases of project work and primary collaboration support
It is, therefore, not surprising that more recent developments in the area of
collaboration support reveal a trend towards integration of two or more of
these formerly separate collaboration systems (mail & messaging; groupware / teamware; web-conferencing). Surveying the landscape of collaboration solutions, it can be observed that different players in the market are at
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different stages in this process of integration. At a more early stage are efforts to jointly market what are in effect separate products by separate providers. A case in point is the co-operation between SiteScape and both
Centra and Placeware, Sitescape offering a browser-based groupware and
both Centra and Placeware offering solutions for browser-based conferencing. In this case, there is only very limited integration between the different
components available. At a somewhat higher stage of integration are the
products provided by Ezenia (InfoWorkSpace), Opentext (Livelink), Lotus
(Quickplace 3) and also eRoom. With these solutions, integration between
the components has been taken further (see Figure 7).
Figure 7: Solutions providing support for most of a project life cycle by integrating tools for synchronous and
asynchronous collaboration
4. Browser- vs. client-based applications for collaboration support
Over the last couple of years, with respect to both groupware and conferencing, solutions have emerged which are no longer based on clients that
have to be installed on a user's desktop. Rather, these solutions operate -on the users' side – on the basis of the by now ubiquitous Web browser.
When the focus is on asynchronous collaboration support, these solutions
are commonly referred to as teamware (BSCW being one of the first examples, more current ones being Hyperoffice or InfoWorkSpace). On the other
hand, when the focus is more on synchronous collaboration, these are referred to as Web-conferencing solutions, examples being the products offered by PlaceWare, WebEx or Genesys (cf. Meier / Schneider 2002).
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There are two major advantages of solutions which are not based on a client software but on the Web-browser instead. From an individual team
member's point of view, these afford great flexibility with respect to the
place of work. Such solutions require only a Web-browser and an internet
connection and can, for example, be used from any internet café anywhere
in the world. From an organisational point of view, they are advantageous
in that they do not require the download and installation of software,
which usually requires specific support staff and may conflict with established IT security policies. In a business world where there is a need for
much flexibility with regard to collaborating with different partners in different projects, browser-based collaboration solutions can reduce significantly the personnel and financial resources needed for establishing interconnection with external co-workers (see Figure 8).
Figure 8: Changing business partners and compatibility issues
The downside of Web-based solutions is, however, that these are slower in
operation than client-based solutions. Any action taken initiates a (re-)load
of a Web-page and, depending on the performance of the local computer,
the network and the distant server, this may take anywhere from a splitsecond to several seconds. Also, Web-based teamware solutions frequently
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provide a more restricted range of functionalities compared to client-based
solutions.3
3
Browser-based collaboration: available solutions
Currently, there are many players in the very dynamic markets for both web
based groupware (teamware) and for web based conferencing (Meier 2001
and Meier / Schneider 2002). Some of the longer established solutions are
eRoom, Hyperoffice, Intrantets or Lotus Quickplace. Some have a specific market focus (e.g., Ezenia InfoWorkSpace originally targeted the defense industry;
IsoSpace targeting mainly the financial industry). While many of the products
available are continually expanding the range of collaboration support functions they provide, it is to be expected that the market will consolidate. Just as
it could be observed with the large number of word processors that were available ten years ago, many of the current players in this field will probably not
survive for long.
The numerous solutions for web-based collaboration support that are available
are different not only in the design of the user interface and their underlying
architecture. They also display strengths and weaknesses in different functional
areas. Tying back to the model of collaboration and the success factors presented at the beginning of this review, what are the functional areas in which
web-based collaboration solutions provide support? They are displayed in
Figure 9 and comprise functionality with respect to
•
3
social translucence and awareness
Who is online? Who is available for communication? What happened
A current example of a client based collaboration solution providing an impressive and rapidly expanding range of functionalities
both for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration is Groove (www.groove.net). In its current version (2.0), Groove provides
the following functional areas in its standard version: calendar, contacts, discussion forum (multi-thread), file repository, notepad
(online rtf-editor), outliner (organising & structuring text items), picture album, sketchpad (whiteboard) and Web-browser for
shared browsing. Additional tools are developed both by Groove Networks and by third parties. Currently, there are almost 20 additional tools available, comprising among others: document review workflow, fully functional email client, custom forms, MindManager ® plug in, meeting management, project management, pin board, CAD viewer, a voting tool or even a lightweight
spreadsheet.
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since I last visited the shared team space? Who is currently doing what?
These functions facilitate the initiation of communication, one of the
key success factors mentioned above (cf. Gutwin / Greenberg 1999).
•
communication
asynchronous via email or discussion forums;
synchronous via text chat, via "walkie-talkie"-style voice chat or even
full duplex audio conferencing
•
coordination
for example, a calendar and a task list for setting joint meetings and for
providing information on "Who is doing what?"
•
actual collaborative work
for example data conferencing for jointly drafting or editing a document
•
team identity and common ground
for example prominent displays of the images of team members, the
mission of the team or via a glossary providing a reference to a common base of definitions
•
security
for example user authentication through passwords or data encryption
Figure 9: Functional areas of solutions for collaboration support
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The range of functions provided in these functional areas differs among the
numerous solutions available. Also, some solutions provide rather specific additional functionalities. Intranets (see www.intranets.com), for example, provides
a common range of collaboration support functions, including messages and
discussion forums, task list and calendar, document repository and search functions. In addition to these, this solution also provides access to the team's information base via wireless devices (Figure 10).
Figure 10:
Screenshot of an Intranets.com sample digital workplace (www.intranets.com) displaying a
portal page with information derived from different functional areas such as Calendar, Announcements, Tasks, What's new? and Links
Inovie's Team Center (www.inovie.com), while providing most of these functions as well, is particularly strong in the area of support for project management and accompanying visualisations, for example detailed task information
or information on resource loading (see Figure 11).
15
Figure 11:
Screenshot of Inovie's Team Center (www.inovie.com), showing the resource loading view
While the solutions mentioned above embody a focus on information sharing
and project management functionality, there are other solutions that focus
more on the psychological and motivational needs of people working together
as a team across distances. This approach is based on the idea that virtual
teams – like any other successful team – have to cope with specific challenges
and need specific support in these areas. While -- except for technology issues
and the requisite media competencies -- these challenges are not fundamentally different for distributed teams compared to co-located teams, they nevertheless may take on additional weight and urgency. For example, ensuring
team member inclusion and developing a joint identity as a team is usually
more difficult to achieve in a distributed team. Similarly, clarification of roles
and relative status, the allocation of resources and the conflicts that are likely to
go with that require more attention and care. This is particularly true for
agreements and for incipient conflicts, as it is easy for team members to avoid
contact and communication until it is too late. Finally, sharing in emotional
moments such as success and failure (for example, after a successful presentation) requires additional effort not necessary in co-located teams (see, e.g., Lipnack / Stamps 1997; Duarte / Snyder 1999; Meier / Herrmann / Hüneke 2001).
16
An example of a solution with a focus on these issues in distributed team work
is Livelink virtualteams. (see http://www.virtualteams.com and Figure 12 for a
screenshot).
Figure 12:
Screenshot of Livelink virtualteams showing a team's portal page with images of its members and a formulation of its mission
In contrast to the three solutions so far presented in this chapter, Ezenia's InfoWorkspace (Figure 13) is a solution that is particularly strong with respect to
the integration of support for both asynchronous and also synchronous
communication. Teams working with InfoWorkspace can not only share information and documents via a repository. They can also find out who is currently
online and engage in live audio, video or data conferencing.
17
Figure 13: Screenshot of Ezenia's InfoWorkspace (www.ezenia.com)
4
UNITE and the case for an open and extendable approach
The UNITE collaboration platform provides individuals and project team members with a rich set of accessories and communication/collaboration facilities
grouped into two types of portals: user portals and project portals. While the
user portal provides access to accessories that facilitate personal activities (e.g.
access to a personal calendar, personal messaging and to the projects one is involved in), the project portal provides access to communication and collaboration facilities related to a particular project. A prominent item in this portal is
the activity view that displays information about who the team members are,
who is online and what meetings are currently going on.
18
Figure 14: Screenshot of the UNITE collaboration platform (www.unite-project.org)
The functional areas provided by UNITE are indicated by bold type in Figure 15.
Figure 15: The functional areas provided by UNITE
19
When comparing UNITE with some of the prominent collaboration support solutions that are currently available in the market, it has to be kept in mind, that
UNITE has been developed as a demonstration prototype and is not yet in the
stage of a marketable product. Some functional areas have not been developed
to a great extent due to the restrictions in terms of development capacity posed
by the project.
The class within which UNITE should be compared is represented by those
products which provide collaboration support both in the area of synchronous
collaboration and asynchronous collaboration on the basis of a web browser. In
addition to the above mentioned product by Intranets.com, there are currently
at least the following products available in this category:
•
LiveLink
LiveLink by Opentext Copr. (www.opentext.com) is currently available in
version 9.0.0.1. Opentext as a company has a strong background in
document management, seach technologies, workflow management
and project management. LiveLink is a modular product that provides
numerous modules, including some that focus on support for synchronous collaboration or more generally on support for virtual teams. Also
available is an interface that allows for a personalized access to one or
more of these LiveLink modules on the basis of filters.
•
InfoWorkspace
InfoWorkspace by Ezenia (www.ezenia.com) is a bundled package of
collaborative tools that support communication, data access, and
knowledge management and is currently available in version 2.5. InfoWorkSpace relies on a physical metaphor to add context to distributed
collaboration: users meet in persistent virtual buildings, floors, and
rooms. Initially developed for use with the military, it is now marketed
more broadly. The two core components are 1) Virtual WorkPlace
which focused on the support for asychnronous collaboration and 2)
Launch Pad which provides instant messenging, text and voice chat, virtual whiteboarding, document editing and application sharing.
•
Quickplace
IBM's Lotus Quickplace (www.lotus.com) is currently available in version
3.0 and has recently been renamed Lotus Team Workplace. The solution integrates with Lotus Notes 6 and Notes R5, Lotus Sametime and
Microsoft Office XP, allows to easily set up virtual rooms for team collaboration (along with the necessary definition of access rights) and
supports synchronous collaboration via the Lotus Sametime component.
•
eRoom
eRoom Technology Inc. was acquired by Documentum, Inc. in late 2002
20
and the eRoom Version 6 collaboration support solution is now marketed as "Documentum eRoom" and representing an addition to
Documentum's Enterprise Content Management Platform (ECM).
UNITE has not yet reached the stage of a marketable product. Nevertheless, a
preliminary comparison of the products on the basis of information publicly
available on the WWW indicates that UNITE does compare favourably on the
following functional areas (see Figure 16):
•
translucence & awareness,
•
asynchronous communication & collaboration,
•
synchronous communication & collaboration,
•
meeting support,
•
support for offline work,
•
integration of physical resources (e.g. making reservations for rooms or
other resources such as data projectors,
•
openness & extendability, and, finally
•
security.
21
Figure 16: Summary of comparison of UNITE with selected products in the market
Translucence and
awareness
Who belongs to team /
project?
UNITE
Livelink
Info-WorkSpace
eRoom
Intranets.com
Lotus
Quickplace
++
+
++
+
o
+
X
via Sametime
(member
images)
Who is online?
Who is working on what?
X
(participation
in meetings)
Event notification
X
X
Synchronous
communication
Text chat
Voice chat
Telephony integration
++
o
o
via Sametime
X
X
+
o
o
?
X
X
X
X
X
via Sametime
?
X
o
++
+
++
+
+
X
eLink
eLink
X
?
?
X
X
?
X
X
Task management
Workflows
Shared bookmarks
Document repository
Rights management
Version control
Document indexing
Information search
documents
discussion
people
Polling
X
only for places /
events
X
X
Calendar
?
?
X
X
?
?
Meeting support
Scheduling
Instant meetings
Whiteboard
?
X
X
X
?
?
++
+
++
X
Multipoint application
sharing
Separate client
needed
Multipoint audio / video
conferencing
X
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
+
?
?
via NetMeeting
With add. server
or Sametime or
component
PlaceWare
via NetMeeting
With add. server
or Sametime or
component
PlaceWare
?
?
X
X
X
X
o
X
X
X
X
via Sametime
X
via Sametime
-
+
-
-
-
+
possible but not
yet realised
-
room reservation
-
-
-
Support for offline work
Integration of physical
resources
o
X
X
X
X
Asynchronous comm. &
collaboration
Integration email client
Messaging
Discussion forum
Address book
X
Openness & extendability
Features
++
+
o
+
-
?
Open APIs
SDK;
XML support;
SAP integr. kit;
NetMeeting;
Sametime;
Placeware
API toolkit
X
Developers
Toolkit ?
+
+
?
X
X
?
?
Calendar & tasks
with MS Outlook
Sync functions
Security
Authentification
Encryption
Certificates
++
++
eSign
++
22
A key aspect of UNITE and a particular strength of this solution is related to integration. UNITE, like several other browser-based collaboration solutions, provides a single point of access to a wide range of functions that support cooperative work at a distance: information repository, calendar, availability indicators, messaging and conferencing. What is specific to UNITE is that it integrates pre-existing tools as components. Prominent examples are the integration of the BSCW document repository and the integration of Netscape Calendar for calendaring purposes (see Figure 14).
What is more, UNITE provides for the integration of established tools on the
side of the users. For anybody participating in several ongoing projects with different partners it would be a real problem if he or she had to switch between
different tools in order to be compatible with the different partners involved
(see Figure 8). The way UNITE is conceptualised, it does not make a difference
whether or not one team member works with MS Outlook for mail and calendaring while another works, for example, with Eudora Mail and Netscape Calendar. Import and export features allow these team members to view their
messages and to keep their calendars from inside UNITE without the need to
switch products when entering new collaborative relationships.
Above and beyond of the integration of a wide range of functional areas and
the integration of parts of the installed software base available with a particular
user, UNITE provides integration in yet another way: the integration of tools to
provide higher level services. One such higher level service is, for example, the
ability to initiate a phone call by clicking on the relevant entries from the team
address book. Another example is that on scheduling a new meeting via the
meeting manager, the system automatically generates messages to the invited
team members and entries in the team calendar (Figure 17).
23
Figure 17: Examples of higher level integrated services provided by UNITE
In summary, then, even though there are several powerful browser-based solutions currently available on the market that provide support for both asynchronous and synchronous team collaboration, there is a place for an approach like
the one embodied in UNITE. UNITE has strong points due to its open architecture and extendability, the integration of existing tools to provide higher level
services and, last not least, the translucence provided by the system which facilitates direct communication. Seeing who is currently online and being able to
click on the image of a colleague for quick initiation of a telephone conference
are strong encouragements for more direct communication among team members – a key success factor in geographically distributed teams.
24
5
A final note: Collaboration support going MS Office - the end of
groupware?
The case of Microsofts Office XP is particularly interesting in the context of the
above discussion about groupware / teamware. This personal productivity suite
provides a range of functions that support distributed co-workers and event
teams in the course of a very broad range of collaboration scenarios. Microsoft
Office XP provides not only improved document co-authoring & review functionality. It also provides an integration of instant messaging and email functionalities (on the user side) in one client (Outlook). Of particular interest for
distributed teams would be the SharePoint Team Services that are part of this
suite. These services allow members to establish a common team site on the
web along with member administration and access rights management, announcements, discussion threads and a document repository.
While for many situations this provides very easy basic collaboration support for
distributed team and project work, there also are two major drawbacks to this
approach. One is that all team or project members need to work with a machine on which Microsoft Office is installed. The other is that the range of functions is very limited compared to dedicated collaboration support systems.
An interesting development in this area is the cooperation between Microsoft
and the new company of (Lotus) Notes developer Ray Ozzie: Groove Networks.
Microsoft holds a roughly 30% share of that company and in summer 2002 the
two companies announced that Microsoft's SharePoint Team Services will be
integrated with Groove's peer-to-peer based collaboration solution. In a related
development, it was announced in mid-January 2003 that Microsoft plans to
acquire PlaceWare, a leading provider of browser-based conferencing services.
Also, Microsoft announced the creation of a new business unit, the Real Time
Collaboration Group. The group plans to bring together Microsoft's various collaboration initiatives to more quickly and efficiently provide information workers with the tools and technologies they need to be more productive in and out
of the office.
Not many details of these plans are available at the moment. Nevertheless, this
cooperation may lead to a state of affairs where groupware and conferencing
applications will be so closely integrated with personal productivity suites that
they are no longer identifiably as a class of application in their own right.
25
6
References
Bullinger, Hans-Jörg; Baumann, Timo; Fröschle, Norbert; Mach, Oliver; Trunzer,
Thomas & Waltert, Jochen (2002): Business communities. Professionelles
Beziehungsmanagement von Kunden, Mitarbeitern und B2B-Partnern im
Internet. Bonn: Galileo.
Duarte, Deborah L. & Nancy Tennant Snyder (1999): Mastering virtual teams:
Strategies, tools, and techniques that succeed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Gutwin, Carl & Greenberg, Saul (1999): The effects of workspace awareness
support on the usability of real-time distributed groupware. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Vol. 6 (3), pp. 243-281.
Lipnack, Jessica & Jeffrey Stamps (1997): Virtual teams: Reaching across space,
time and organizations with technology. John Wiley & Sons.
Meier, Christoph (2001): Virtuelle Teamarbeitsräume im WWW. Wirtschaftspsychologie, Heft 4 (2001), S. 78-83.
Meier, Christoph; Herrmann, Dorothea; Hüneke, Knut (2001): Medien- und
Kommunikationskompetenz - Schlüsselqualifikation für die Zusammenarbeit auf Distanz. Wirtschaftspsychologie, Heft 4 (2001), S. 12-20.
Meier, Christoph & Schneider, Isabel (2002): Live-Konferenzen im WWW: Nutzungsszenarien, Produkte und Anbieter. Stuttgart: Fraunhofer-IRB Verlag.
Steinheider, B.; Ganz, W.; Nogge, W. & Warschat, J. (1999): Ein Modell zur Unterstützung von Expertenkooperationen. In: Kommunikation und Kooperation. Arbeitswissenschaftliche Aspekte der Gestaltung von Kommunikations- und Kooperationsbeziehungen und Systemen, hrsg. von F.J. Heeg / G.
Kleine. Aachen: Verlag Mainz, S. 59-64.
Teufel, S., C. Sauter, T. Mühlherr & K. Bauknecht (1995): Computerunterstützung für die Gruppenarbeit. Bonn: Addison-Wesley.
Wilczek, Stephan & Krcmar, Helmut (2001): Betriebliche Groupwareplattformen. In: CSCW Kompendium - Lehr- und Handbuch zum computerunterstützten kooperativen Arbeiten, hrsg. von G. Schwabe / N. Streitz / R. Unland. Berlin u.a.: Springer, S. 310-320.
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