Collaboration software allows people to work together electronically to accomplish a task, such as writing a report, planning a PR event, or completing an IT project. The whole point is to improve productivity, which for knowledge work can be measured by calculating revenue generated per employee divided by his/her salary. The trouble is that collaboration can take many forms, from a simple e-mail exchange to a complex workflow with many steps and participants. Moreover, collaboration can be temporary or permanent, focused within a single business function or designed to be cross-functional.

In an ideal world, team members would be able to design their own collaboration environments by mixing and matching ready-made, easy-to-use software tools — while minimizing costs and security problems at the enterprise level. But reality is a different story. In this article we look at how collaboration software affects the productivity of individuals, work groups, and the enterprise as a whole in four different workflow scenarios. Next we discuss the pros and cons of five different technology strategies from the perspectives of both enterprise and business unit productivity. Finally, we comment on the results of our own and our members' experiments with collaboration tools.

More ... (members only). How to become a member.

Created on January 2, 2006 l Updated on December 1, 2008