Collaborative Thinking

Enterprise Twitter: Clarity Amid The Hype

Some good points in this post from Adina Levin (Socialtext). For the most part I agree but we're still in the phase were vendors are hyping the benefits and not being transparent regarding some of the "non-fun" aspects of making these systems acceptable for large enterprise environments. I don't address the conflict these tools will have with enterprise IM/UC systems but that's another decision organizations will have to address - and will UC vendors respond in a "good enough" fashion to keep these tools from gaining any type of long-term traction.

Links to real identities and work activity

With public Twitter, people use nicknames. Many people add a profile link that identifies who they are in the real world. Many do not, and tweet pseudonymously. In a business setting, the signal is tied to the user's real-world identity, derived from their company directory entry and business activities. You can navigate from a signal to a profile, and discover a lot about the person in their work context. A significant part of the value the people get from enterprise social software is finding the smart and plugged-in people in their organization. Microblogging helps discover the interesting people, and the links to rich work-context profiles reveal more about what the person does and what they know.

Agree. Within an enterprise, any type of "Twitter" system will be linked to directory systems in much the same way as e-mail and instant messaging systems are linked via address book synchronization techniques.

Agree. The profile aspect is very important - it becomes a way for people to "peel away the layers" of a conversation thread to find out more about someone, perhaps read other posts by that individual, look at their tags/bookmarks, and so on. The risk here though is the proliferation of profiles. If people have to create and maintain half a dozen different profiles of themselves - chaos will ensue and people will lose interest in maintaining their profile data. Yes, someone could come along with a synchronization model but that's neither here nor there right now. Profile proliferation should be a top concern of enterprise architects and others involved in social software strategies.

Disagree. This is not micro-blogging. Within the enterprise, this will be viewed as a messaging system. If you want to consider micro-blogging as a messaging system then I'm fine with that - but Twitter-like applications are going to be defined as a type of communication system (which will trigger all sorts of other issues related to logging, audit, compliance, e-discovery, etc).

Sharing links in the intranet

With public twitter, one of the common usage patterns is to share links. Well-informed, insightful people scan the news, and share interesting tidbits with their followers. This valuable pattern on the public net gains power inside an organization. People can share links and commentary about to documents they are working on, for example, a marketing plan or a budget. And they can share private commentary about public links. For example, there can be a company-private discussion about a move by a competitor. Enterprise microblogging allows users to share links to private content, and to share private discussion about public content.

Agree. Permission models will be a fundamental requirement and will be a source of competitive differential for vendors entering this space. This is another reason why profiles themselves need to support multiple layers of permissions so people only see profile attributes that they are allowed to see. This also raises the issue of logging/audit/compliance. If these messages are sent/received by people already under communication policies that have their messages logged for audit/compliance reasons then Twitter-like systems absolutely will have to support similar capabilities. If not, then third-party vendors need to step-up. If there is no support for these capabilities - these tools will go nowhere in certain organizations, or there deployment will be limited.

Confidentiality

The main difference between Twitter and enterprise microblogging is confidentiality. You're not sharing information with the big wide world, only with your colleagues. As in personal life, confidentiality frees people to share more openly about nonpublic topics. Of course, people need to be still cognizant about what they share, as they do in meeting rooms or around water coolers. Inside an enterprise, microblogging has a different balance of transparency and privacy than email. With email, your message is visible only to the people you choose to send it to. With enterprise microblogging, the recipient chooses who to follow, and whose messages to see. This provides useful "ambient transparency" in an organization, for example spreading useful knowledge about products in development and customer relationships. Enterprise microblogging is more private than public Twitter, and more transparent than email.

Agree in part / disagree in part. In most companies, employees should have no expectation of privacy when it comes to email. Virtually all companies state so in their usage policies. Yes, there is the perception of privacy and employees can rightly believe that only under extenuating circumstances will their email be read - but privacy is something that will be determined by various laws (e.g., privacy regs) and company policies. Even with that, email can be forwarded so the common recommendation is "don't write in email what you wouldn't want to see public". Yes, e-mail is not transparent - that I agree with - email information and conversations are horribly fragmented, disconnected, difficult to leverage, etc. But Twitter-like systems are also difficult to follow - the tools so far do not do a great job of isolating conversation threads, manage/filter messages over time, etc. On top of this - do we really think that companies will have wide-open conversation spaces without applying permission models that limit access rights based on a variety of business reasons?  I don't disagree with the concept of transparency - but you have to consider policies related to role, separation of duties, security, confidentiality, intellectual property, compliance and so on. There are very good reasons to have bigger walled gardens within enterprise organizations - and some organizations will be much more public than others - but we do get back to addressing barriers encountered by other messaging tools.

BTW - many (if not all) of these concerns and issues apply equally to "activity streams". The need for activity streams to support permission models, and comply with logging/audit/compliance/discovery requirements should be pretty clear. For vendors offering "Twitter for the Enterprise" or "Activity Streams" - making sure you support security (permission/access controls), identity, and records management requirements has no down side.

SocialText

Communities and Networks Connection

Nancy White (a long-time community-building practitioner and subject-matter expert) and Tony Karrer (eLearning Technology blog and creator of the eLearning Learning site) have asked me to participate in a content aggregation site that will make it easier for you to find interesting articles on topics related to communities and networks. I noticed several that I already subscribe to:

Endless Knots - Jessica Lipnack

Engineers without Fears

Full Circle

Library Clips

Mathemagenic

Networks Complexity and Relatedness

TNT - The Network Thinker

You will find many other blogs listed. There are options to help you search and filter the information as well.So visit the site - look around - grab the feed - sit back and enjoy. It's that simple!

 

Dear Microsoft

I was having a very productive day yesterday when a Windows Update pop-up informed me that important updates had been installed on my computer and that a reboot was necessary. This was a pretty normal event - I have Windows Update set to automatically install updates. So I closed down my applications and proceeded to reboot my system (a 6 month old Dell E6400 running Vista (business). As the system tried to reboot, the infamous "blue screen of death" flashed before my eyes and the system through me into a start-up recovery program. I selected some of the options to fix the reboot problem, check memory and other functions. This entailed multiple attempts at rebooting - followed each time by the same wonderful blue screen.  Eventually I settled on a system restore to get to a stable version of the operating system. After another blue screen the system finally seemed to correct itself and Vista came up. This took a couple of hours elapsed time followed by another hour or so running chkdsk and other tasks (like backing up my file changes made that day) to correct any problems.

Trying to debug the problem, I noticed that the update history told me that the installation failed (BTW, I already knew that) with an error code of 80242016 for the Cumulate Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 For Windows Vista (KB961260).

This afternoon - yep, you guessed it. Windows Update is back again telling me that I need to reboot (ok, yes I should have reset the auto-update to not automatically install things - duh). My system has not yet rebooted. What I find interesting is that in the update status, it is telling me that the install is pending but the update failed - this time with an error code of 80242014.

So - beside being a little upset at myself for forgetting to change the auto-update setting - I have a question for those Microsoft folks that read my blog. BTW, I've pinged my own internal help desk group to help me figure out what to do next to stop/remove the update - but until then there is this sense of impending doom ... I am so looking forward to repeating all the fun I had yesterday.

But my question is: why - if update status is already saying that the update is in error - why would it still be pending and trying to force a reboot? If it already knows that there is an error - shouldn't there be an obvious option to cancel the reboot? The greater question of course relates to why this update is causing my system to blue screen and throw me into a very unfriendly (from a user experience perspective) start-up recovery program.

Once again - I've backed up any file changes I've made today - I'm pretty sure that I'm in deep do-do again. BTW - the "get help for this error" is really kind of useless - just thought I'd let you know that as well. Oh, and BTW - please update the TechNet phrase for this security bulletin: "Known Issues. None."

Clouds & Mobility = Sensors & User Experience

Insightful expansion of what cloud computing could enable... 

Into the cloud: a conversation with Russ Daniels, Part II - Ars Technica

RD: Let me give you another example that describes the expressiveness of the cloud and the role that devices play. We tend to think of devices too narrowly. I do a fair amount of business travel, and every now and then I'm lucky enough to be on a plane where I have a screen and I can watch a movie. But, a common occurrence is that the flight crew comes on the PA and announces that we're landing, so they shut down the entertainment system with ten or fifteen minutes left in the movie. Consequently, I have a surprising number of movies that I've seen most, but not all of.

Think about that problem, and then imagine that you go into your hotel room, turn on your entertainment system and it asks if you'd like to continue the movie that was interrupted in your flight. To do that, it's just a matter of propagating a small amount of state—the airline knew who was in the seat, they know what channel was being watched on the entertainment system and they know what frame the movie was interrupted on. That little bit of state can be propagated up to a profile that's associated with me, the passenger.

When I check into my hotel, I can provide access to that profile for the aspects of the profile that I think are relevant to the hotel, and that provides them with the opportunity to offer me that surprise of being able to finish watching the movie.

I didn't own the device in the airplane; I don't own the device in the hotel. By expanding our thinking about what Internet-capable devices ought to be, aside from the notebooks or phones, we are able to include anything that has the ability to be technology-enabled. These cloud-enabled devices can play a role in understanding what you're doing, offering you assistance and improving the experience that you have doing it.

Devices increasingly become important not only as user experiences, but also as sensors. One of the great things about a cell phone is that it has the ability to generate event streams relevant to what I'm doing—the hotspots that I go by, all of that kind of stuff. When you accumulate those streams, you can then do analytics to start to identify my defaults, my preferences. You can notice patterns of behavior that suggest when I do one thing, there's a pretty high probability that I'm going to do this other thing.

All this means that technologies can start to identify your intentions, rather than you having to map between what you want to do and how technology can help you—and, then, of course, forgetting the fact that you spent a lot of time coaxing the technology to go along.

Ultimately, the cloud creates a fundamental opportunity to approach user experience in a much different way.

Into the cloud: a conversation with Russ Daniels, Part II - Ars Technica

UC And ROI: Round2: IBM's Truth And Fiction Example

John Del Pizzo from the IBM Sametime team responded to my post - but, I'm not persuaded by the counter-arguments.  

Point 1

He dinged us on:

"...the total cost of ownership is not clearly outlined, a reasonable TCO model would establish a timeline (say 3 years) and include the total costs, including various weighting factors for planning, operational support, integration costs, help desk, change management, and so on."

As I helped work up these estimates, I'll take the heat for this one. While our goal for the Lotusphere keynote was to provide concrete examples of how Sametime could pay for itself within a year, we did not set out to provide an exhaustive TCO model. We have to leave something for folks like Mike to do. :-) But... if you were at the keynote, you may have noticed that our composite Renovations, Inc example was followed by one from a German manufacturing firm. They provided data on their 3 year costs including things like education and support. Their return was 9 times costs. So, while Renovations, Inc was not a full TCO, I'd argue the composite return of 3.5 times costs was actually fairly conservative. Of course, your milage may vary and you should examine the TCO in light of your specific organization.

Round2: A fair point. The more specific example is appreciated but that doesn't really excuse IBM from portraying an incomplete / inaccurate argument. I would have preferred to eliminate the simplistic example then and stick to a testimonial that reflected a real-life situation. I think real scenarios always trump fabricated illustrations. Saving the time on the over-simplistic demo would have allotted more time to dive more deeply into an actual use-case.

Point 2

On replacing the licensing fees of a hosted web meeting service with Sametime:

I dislike this example because IBM fails to accurately portray the total cost of ownership for an on-premise implementation of Sametime vs. a SaaS solution.

To an extent, this is the same issue as above. Yes, there are costs associated with running your own infrastructure versus outsourcing it. However, the point stands that you can pay for the software licenses, hardware and a full-time administrator with what you would save by eliminating 1000 Webex Meet Me licenses - in year one. And since you don't have to "rebuy" Sametime every year - maintenance fees are only 20% of the purchase price - the savings go up dramatically in the out years. AND you get a full unified communications platform with an extensive range of capabilities above and beyond only online meetings. I'm not saying that the hosted model isn't attractive for some - just that there are scenarios where it makes more sense to own the infrastructure.

Round 2: The argument is still incomplete though - are all situations handled with only one administrator - how are complex ST implementations that require placing components of different servers handled - when is more than one admin needed and what about the other support people (help desk, system engineering, networking, server support, change management, etc? Clinging to the notion that all you have is license cost and one administrator is very simplistic. You also have costs incurred when major releases need to be evaluated and an infrastructure upgrade scheduled. I realize the sensitivity concerning WebEx since a good number of ST shops use ST for IM but other vendors for web conferencing - but we need to be a bit more accurate here.

Point 3

On using Sametime to IM enable a support site to reduce the number of calls.

This example is a stretch for me - a big stretch - most customer-facing applications on web sites that are handled by call centers do not use off-the-shelf generic IM products. They typically use real-time collaboration tools that are included within their call center suites and/or CRM applications. The reason is that call centers do a lot of multi-channel management so you do not want someone involved in an IM chat to appear available to handle a phone call or email response. You need to integrate on-hook/off-hook signaling, integrate with other customer response management tools (telephone, web, e-mail, IM, etc). IBM is correct that organizations should be looking at these tools - but incorrect that they should look at IBM and Sametime

Sorry, Mike but I have to completely disagree with you here. We specifically included this scenario because we have customers who use Sametime for exactly this purpose. How long have we been talking about the benefits seen by companies like Celina Insurance? Or a large financial services firm that is using Sametime on their loan website? In the latter case, they integrated Sametime with a partner application to route the IM to the next available agent and are evolving the implementation to connect to their telephony system to show onhook/offhook status. This way IM's wont be routed to someone already on the phone. I probably get this question once a week from our sales teams... so clearly companies are thinking about extending their web sites and call center applications with Sametime.

Round2: Sorry - you made my point. You need to add in the cost of the partner application or the customized integration into the e-Service/CRM suite that the customer is using if you want to be accurate. Implementing ST as a silo, without the integration into the multi-channel interaction management environment of large enterprise call centers is a huge oversight in the IBM argument. You need to include those costs before you can address any potential savings. And if you include those costs - how does that compare with the native real-time capabilities found in leading call center applications that address e-Service. IF those costs had been included - I'd be fine. Presenting them in a way that dodges those issues is disappointing in many ways.

Point 4

The "time saved" argument is one that has been used over and over again to justify technologies ... if you save someone 10 minutes it does not mean they will take that 10 minutes and apply it to real work. The more structured and directed the activity is (e.g., call center) the better that argument resonates. But the more discretionary the work, there a greater chance that the person will just chat with a co-worker, go grab a coffee, etc.

This is the one Mike brought up twice, so I'll address it last. (And I really got a kick out of his example of what people would do with all their new-found free time.) But... we didn't go near the productivity gain potential in the Renovations, Inc composite example. While nearly every customer I've ever spoken to has told me that the productivity gains are the reason Sametime is such an invaluable tool, the gain is usually difficult to quantify ahead of time. So for Renovations, Inc, we stuck to what could be quantified with a reasonable degree of certainty before an implementation. I'm not sure why we got two thumbs down for an argument we didn't use.
Beyond that minor detail, I'm afraid this line of reasoning wouldn't hold water for me anyway. Perhaps we should go back to using typewriters because word processors have led to too much golf? Seriously, though, IBM has documented that it closes its books 3 days faster every quarter because of Sametime. While they maybe hard to quantify beforehand, productivity gains should not be dismissed when it comes to Unified Communcations & Collaboration software.

Round2: I will match your argument with 10+ years of being in the analyst business and talking to multiple hundreds of clients that consistently point out that "time saved" is over-rated because it is often very difficult to prove real savings. Yes, you can identify time freed up - vendors are right to make that claim - they fall down on assumptions regarding how that time might be re-applied. Too many variables in some situations. For instance, in those situations where work/workers are transactional or semi-transactional (structured task workers), then you can indeed get pretty close to converting "time saved" into real efficiencies because those activities will have metrics to substantiate it. If that is the case - then you can make that point and be well-received. But once you get to what people refer to as "knowledge work" - (e.g., people re salaried, are paid regardless of time saved; or where the work/tasks have a lot of flexibility in how they get done and over what time period; or where work is not really output-driven - then the time saved argument is pretty weak. It can get a project approved - that happens a lot - but when you go back to look for the savings - it's like chasing vapor. You can be somewhat flippant in your response, but it just shows a very weak understanding on the part of IBM regarding the challenge of measuring productivity. You can go back to many industry efforts that have tried - economists and folks in the educational arena. It's a tough intangible to measure. Fortunately, IBM is not alone - Microsoft made the same grandiose claim around its OCS R2 launch. It's a very common approach - and vendors should be called on it.

The Sametime Blog

HBS Working Knowledge: Virtual Teams

The citation link will bring you to the page where you can download the PDF. Worth scanning...

Virtual Team Learning: Reflecting and Acting, Alone or With Others

Authors:
Deborah L. Soule and Lynda M. Applegate

Abstract

This paper examines virtual team learning in new product development situations. New product development activities manifest novelty, uncertainty and complexity, presenting an extreme need for learning in the course of the work. We present data from an exploratory study of learning processes in globally dispersed new product development teams. These qualitative data are used to investigate components of team learning previously highlighted in the team learning literature—namely reflection-oriented and action-oriented behaviors—and to examine the boundaries of these learning behaviors. We find that effective virtual teams, like co-located teams, engage in both reflective and action-oriented learning behaviors. However, the virtual context highlights distinct participation strategies in teams' learning patterns, which aim to leverage deep, specialist knowledge, on one hand, or seek to integrate diverse knowledge, on the other hand. Moreover, our findings suggest that, in the virtual setting, the boundary of team membership is not centrally associated with different learning behaviors and outcomes, as argued in other team learning research. Instead, virtual team learning behaviors are likely to be shaped by boundaries that delimit timely access to relevant knowledge and skill. In conclusion, we discuss implications for future virtual team learning research.

First Look: February 3, 2009 — HBS Working Knowledge

Avoid Profile Potpourri

Connectbeam is one of those first-movers in the market that often gets overlooked but they continue to do some creative things (see below). While initially identified as a social bookmark system for the enterprise (an "internal delicious"), the company has done a credible job of expanding the conversation beyond a tooling discussion. In a broader context, issues related tagging and bookmarking lead to more business-centric conversations on the benefits from user-led information discovery, filtering and allowing people at a personal and group level to self-organize information. While some activities around tags/bookmarks might be directly related to a work activity, there are community interactions made possible that enable informal information sharing, personal learning and ad-hoc group formation as people connect to one another.

However, (you knew there had to be a "but" coming...) - as I read the post below, it brought up a topic in my mind that strategists should be concerned about and that is the emergence of isolated profile components within a lot of the tools associated with "Enterprise 2.0". Already you can see vendors on the market (blog, wikis, feed syndication platforms, social bookmark systems, etc) all coming out with their own profile component. In parallel - vendors in the unified communications space also have their own versions of rich profiles.

It's understandable - people want to have a richer understanding of their fellow employees and vendors want to differentiate their products from competitors - profiles help meet those needs. Often these profile components are also associated with additional benefits such as expertise location and community-building. There are clearly applications that can be built around profiles but the proliferation of profiles embedded in a proprietary way across multiple products should raise critical questions: (1) how many profile engines does an enterprise need, (2) how will we systematically populate multiple profiles efficiently, (3) how will we persuade workers to create/maintain multiple profiles, (4) how do profiles link to underlying collaboration, content, communication infrastructure and finally, (5) how should organizations align profile subsystems within social networking platforms with their identity management infrastructure.

The three major players right now for social network sites within the enterprise are: IBM (Lotus Connections), Jive (Clearspace), and Microsoft (SharePoint). IBM and Microsoft are also major UC vendors but the profile functions in their UC products are not aligned with profiles in their social computing products. There are of course other vendors that have social networking capabilities - some focus on more vertical applications while others have more of a suite or take on an overlay approach. But none really have the completeness of what I would consider needed for a Tier 1 player right now. (Note: I would expect Oracle  and Cisco to more clearly define their respective solutions and profile direction in this area at some point.)

Each of these vendors (IBM, Jive, Microsoft) have profile modules. Yet none have clearly articulated how organizations should view the relationship between its profile engine and identity management strategies within the enterprise. None have really addressed interoperability and federation techniques developers and vendor partners should use across products that all have their own profile component (e.g., perhaps based on hCard). 

So - while the post below from the folks at Connectbeam is interesting and the solution worth a look - I would caution people on the profile feature. I would recommend that when you do your vendor evaluations - carve a section out for profiles and look at the bigger picture. You might avoid some messy integration and user adoption issues down the road. 

The Connectbeam Social Computing Blog: Putting the Social into Microsoft Outlook

Connectbeam Social Profiles Integrated into Microsoft Outlook

Through Spotlight Connect for Outlook, employees' Connectbeam Social Profiles are embedded into every internal email. Here's a screen shot of this integration:

What we've put in this profile is the following:

• Contact information, synchronized with LDAP or Active Directory
• Expertise - as created and managed by each employee
• Projects - as created and managed by each employee
• Recent Activity - content created across different social software apps plus bookmarks
• Employee profile toggling - click another email recipient name, see their profile

The social profile makes it easy to see what colleagues are doing and what they know, all at a glance from the Microsoft Outlook inbox.

The Connectbeam Social Computing Blog: Putting the Social into Microsoft Outlook