Comments on: Where should collaboration sit?

By: Jane McConnell

Jane McConnell — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:06:49 +0000

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

By: Jane McConnell

Jane McConnell — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:05:40 +0000

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.

By: Peter Smith

Peter Smith — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:59:50 +0000

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.

By: Mike Morley

Mike Morley — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:25:42 +0000

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.