Where should collaboration sit?

Here are some issues I'm working on currently:

Should collaboration sit inside or beside the intranet?

I recommend placing collaboration within the intranet landscape. That's to say, making the intranet the front door into collaborative spaces (even if they are built on a different technology). This reinforces the role of the intranet as a business support tool and makes it easier to blend information and collaboration.

Should the collaborative spaces be distributed or centralized?

Should they be scattered throughout the intranet, that is to say, integrated into different work areas or sections that are nearest the people using the spaces? Or should they be grouped together in a larger area under the title of "collaboration" or something along those lines?

Proximity to users is important. That suggests that the distributed solution is best. However, making the spaces centrally visible has the advantage of raising their visibility. When we don't know where to place something in an intranet, we often say "It doesn't matter. It can go anywhere and people can link to it." True, but risky. This can create confusion for users, and of course will create broken links at some point.

I believe it matters very much where you place the collaborative spaces. I recommend that large organizations create a dedicated area where these collaborative spaces "live".

How high up in the navigation should the "Collaboration" area be placed?

I often recommend that it exist at level 1 in the navigation, thereby becoming part of the global navigation bar. This makes the statement that collaboration is important for the organization. There is a "Collaboration central" concept much like some organizations have a "Blog central" area.

I'm currently working with an organization who is considering make "Communities" one of 4 entry points into the intranet. The other 3 are: Reference documents, an HR-related entry and an "About the organization" entry point.

This organization already has a fairly large amount of communities-driven work and projects. They want the intranet to help reinforce and lead the organization towards generalizing this way of working.

Who owns collaboration?

There are different things to be owned.

First, there needs to be a framework: a toolset and guidelines. Although I strongly believe in leaving space for experimenting and playing with new technologies, I also have seen that unless the enterprise designates specific tools for specific collaborative needs, there is a strong risk of creating "collaboration silos" because of the diversity of tools.

Guidelines need to be defined to ensure that there is a procedure (as light as possible) for opening new spaces, an owner for the new space and when and how to close the space.

This framework will be created by a central team, most likely business, communication, IT and sometimes HR people.

After that, ownership passes to the business, functional and project managers. In short, whoever is leading or facilitating the collaborative space.

Stage 3 intranets have more collaborative features than Stages 1 and 2. They also govern/regulate these spaces more than the other stages.

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I'm looking for examples where "collaboration" or "communities" or similar themes live at the top (level 1) navigation. If you have an example, can you share it with us (along with giving us an idea of what the other top level categories are)?

4 Responses to “Where should collaboration sit?”

1. Mike Morley Says:
   March 10th, 2009 at 10:25 pm

   Greetings – My Company recently converted all the user interfaces (employee and partner) to a WEB 2.0 framework that’s improved communications and cross team collaboration. It’s a game changer for us and the ROI and TCO models I have seen are impressive. It wasn’t a massive IT overhaul rather it’s a thin layer that resides between the user and the core systems.
   I’m going to try benchmark the areas in which you’re working on to see how we stack.
   Should collaboration sit inside or beside the intranet? In the intranet yes, the intranet should be the center of the company’s employee access for information and systems. With a WEB 2.0 portal interface the Intranet should be personalized to the level of system access based on employee credential.
   Should the collaborative spaces be distributed or centralized? We choose Centralized with a distributed look and feel based on user login (personalization), e.g. Region, Brand, Department level, ect.
   How high up in the navigation should the “Collaboration” area be placed? We have general public collab spaces but then we integrated the collab with our PMO software where blogs and wiki’s can become tied to the specific project which is proprietary and sensitive to the project community of internal and external resources. Thus becoming a valuable knowledge base for our company to search into.
   Who owns collaboration? The executives of our company took every tool that is widely used and made it fall under the WEB 2.0 interface.
   Each one of these questions can go a mile deep in discussion with right or wrongs. But I thought I’d make contact and state my experience and commend you on the fine job you’re doing in this space. Big Fan.

2. Peter Smith Says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 11:59 am

   Whilst some of the IA/UX people will shoot it down, I still believe that the top level navigation has a role to play in constantly reminding everyone what “intranet” has turned into today. It also helps to get an shared understanding of how separate technologies, services and stakeholder perspectives can be brought together under the “intranet” umbrella without rocking the boat too much
   “Homepage” : Communication
   Tab 1 : MyWork/Job (MSS,webapps,role specific tools etc)
   Tab 2 : Collaboration (access to and orientation of how to use)
   Tab 3 : Me & “the Organization” (ESS, identity etc)
   Ok it is not perfect, may want some collab activity around comms, but lets keep it simple so it works.

3. Jane McConnell Says:
   March 27th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

   Mike – one comment on what you have described:
   I think making collaboration spaces centralised with a decentralised look and feel is good. Increased visibility. More local appropriation.
   However, some global organizations have bandwith issues when too much is centralized and there is lots of “local” activity in these places.

4. Jane McConnell Says:
   March 27th, 2009 at 4:06 pm

   Peter – why will some IA/UX people shoot it down?

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