The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Optimize Telework … Three steps for an effective telework program: (1) set use policies, (2) deploy enabling technologies (the same as what in-office workers get), and (3) establish employee goals (focused on actual performance and outputs, not work time). Business Enhancement Associates
• Indian, Chinese or Hungarian? … What sort of teams do you run in: “Indian”, “Chinese”, or “Hungarian”? BioTeams
• Shore Bank … Case study on Shore Bank, and its adoption of Traction Software’s TeamPage. It was initially put in for ad-hoc threaded discussion, document sharing and editing, and RSS consolidation. With success came a wider mandate: formal business processes. “The Shore Bank IT department works towards completion of from 40 to more than 100 milestones at any time. There are a substantial amount of details and communication traffic associated with each milestone. Since moving to a milestone management process with Traction TeamPage, they have successfully transitioned from e-mail and a spreadsheet to use of a wiki, and substantially improved the overall process.” Traction Software
• Five Ways to Utilize Collaborative and Social Software … Todd proposes five ways to prove / explore the value of collaborative and social software in your organization: (a) for locating new customers for products and services, (b) for enhancing customer service, (c) for knowledge management, (d) for customer self-service, and (e) for re-doing badly broken internal work processes. Collaborage
• New Book on Telework … WorldatWork released a new book, “Telework: A Critical Component to Your Total Rewards Strategy”. “This informational book helps organizations successfully implement or expand telework options to support additional important operational goals of the organization. Using practical steps and sample templates, the book also explains the human resource, management, legal and technology components of operating a telework plan, and includes a brief discussion of how telework fits into a business continuity plan. ” PRWeb

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Attunity InFocus 2.2 … Attunity released Version 2.2 of InFocus, its software platform for building applications for managing work. “ Attunity InFocus is the only platform specifically designed to help focus the activities, actions and interactions of teams and networks of individuals around the resolution of an organization’s most critical operational issues.” New features: real-time collaboration, in-context information information, historical knowledge analysis (save snapshots of the past and have them organized in a timeline), and more. Available immediately. Attunity
• IBM Lotus Expeditor … IBM released Version 6.1.1 of Lotus Expeditor, a new tool that enables professionals to combine information from different sources to create just-in-time work applications. “IBM Lotus Expeditor 6.1.1 software is a standards-based managed client that can extend mashups in the enterprise to a wide variety of desktop, laptop, and mobile devices on the market, helping to give customers immediate access to critical business information such as insurance and expense forms, inventory data and mobile customer relationship management (CRM). Using the next generation of the Web, or Web 2.0, IBM’s Lotus Expeditor gives users the ability to be productive both on the road and on their desktops.” CNN Money
• What’s After Email Stress? … If you feel stressed out by the volume of email and your inability to keep up, what happens next? “The broader issue the article below raises is whether this type of worker stress is limited to e-mail? As XML feeds, instant messaging, blogs, social networking, presence-enabled applications and other social tools invade the workplace – how fragmented and disjointed will workers feel as they triage a growing number of communication channels and collaboration spaces all demanding their attention.” Collaborative Thinking
• DominoWiki for Proof of Concept … Dennis reviews the case of NYK Logistics & Megacarrier, who implemented DominoWiki on their Lotus Domino environment for Intranet contributions. With the value proven, the firm is moving ahead with an Atlassian Confluence deployment. ZDNet
• NextAction! 2.0 … S4BB released Version 2.0 of NextAction!, its GTD tool for BlackBerry users. New features: enhanced performance, better desktop compatibility, project support, and more. Works with both Mac OS X and Windows. Available immediately. S4BB Limited
• Open Text and Microsoft … Open Text announced an integrated solution with Microsoft technologies for matter lifecycle management and practice support for law firms. “The integrated solution will provide complete matter lifecycle management, from matter inception to closure. Firms will be able to manage the intake of new business and potential conflicts of interest, establish “ethical walls” separating client cases, and provide records management and archiving that meets compliance requirements. Working in a matter-centric environment, users will be able to access documents and email in different repositories; perform federated searches across matters; and automatically assign metadata to allow correct classification of documents and pre-population of relevant content – all the information management functionality today’s lawyers demand. The single point of content management also means that firms can apply retention schedules across repositories in a consistent and centralized manner.” Available early 2008. Open Text

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• Differing Horizons … Rob says that David Allen’s thinking on horizons/altitudes didn’t fit with his way of working, so he developed a new set of levels: next actions, supporting projects, 90-day targets, annual goals, and ambitions / dreams. And here’s how he uses it: “When I do my weekly review I ensure that each 90 day target has active supporting projects – if not I will decide what I need to do and start a project off. This helps keep my focus on doing what I want to do. After ensuring all 90 day targets are moving forwards I then check my projects. What projects do I have which do not seem to support a 90 day goal.” 7Breaths
• Five Oversold Ideas … Dustin says that despite lots of reading and thinking, he doesn’t see the value in five productivity ideas: (1) mind mapping (“disappointment”, “beautiful pictures that seem to offer nothing in the way of actual productivity”), (2) the 80/20 rule (too “mathy” and unmeasurable), (3) the power of Brand You (“misdirected”), (4) making productivity a habit (“habits can hinder our ability to adapt to change”), and (5) visualizing success (“self-examination is key, not escaping into an imagined but unrealized future”). Have you found value in these? LifeHack
• Nine Habits to Stop Now … (1) answering calls from unrecognized numbers, (2) doing email first thing and last thing each day, (3) agreeing to meetings without a clear agenda, (4) letting people ramble, (5) checking email constantly, (6) overcommunicating with low-profit, high-maintenance customers, (7) working more to fix overwhelm, (8) carrying a cellphone / BlackBerry 24×7, and (9) expecting work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should. Tim Ferriss

Other Noteworthy Insights

• Reporting on Groove Forms … Toucan Reporter 2007 extracts, filters, and formats data captured via Groove Forms. Works with Groove 3.1 and Groove 2007. Available immediately. Information Patterns
• Blogs as Stores … Comprehensive overview of how to integrate e-commerce into TypePad blogs. TypePad Hacks