The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Ken offers a diagnostic tool for virtual teams, designed to highlight issues before they becoming problems. “We can see that even asking and discussing this one question in itself can yield hugely valuable insight into a particular team’s most likely challenges. So I offer here my team profiling checklist which can be used to rapidly profile an organisational team or multi-enterprise network across eight different dimensions. It can be worked through with a senior member of a forming team in as little as 15 minutes. I don’t pretend it is exhaustive but I do guarantee that if you use it properly it will identify at least 3 things about the team which you did not know about or were making invalid assumptions around and which will impact on your virtual team support plan!“
• AngloGold Ashanti uses a collaboration platform built on SharePoint to support team collaboration and knowledge sharing. An initial capability was focused on expertise location: “Employees of AngloGold Ashanti are able to post questions on the portal. These can then be accessed by other employees who have agreed to share their knowledge, and have listed their areas of competency, based on their own experiences and knowledge. This allows for problem solving to take place across the organisation; as one’s job title is not always a clear indicator of one’s ability. Using Just ASK! individuals can contribute based on what they know, as opposed to who they are. When a user posts a question to the system that matches the listed expertise of another registered user or group, Just ASK! notifies the listed individuals via email. They are then able to log in and post an answer. Users can rate the quality of the answers they receive and in this way effectively add to the knowledgebase by enabling other users to quickly identify the best responses.“

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Socialtext announced Socialtext 3.0, a new edition of its enterprise wiki software (hat tip, Alan). New capabilities: Socialtext Dashboard (“personalized and customizable dashboards of internal and external social software activity. The social news feed of your colleague’s activity in wikis and beyond aids attention management.“) and Socialtext People (“social networking adapted for the enterprise. Throughout the Socialtext wiki, Profiles are made visible so at any time you can pivot to the people behind the content. Profiles and a user directory make it easy for colleagues to introduce themselves and discover implicit and explicit expertise. People can subscribe to the activity of colleagues. Groupings enable users to declare interest and expertise on their profile and other users profiles, making group forming as simple as adding a tag.“). In beta. Socialtext also announced four core Solution Areas for its wiki platform: Business Social Networks, Collaborative Intelligence, Flexible Client Collaboration and Participatory Knowledgebase.
• panagenda released MarvelClient Skinning Edition for Notes, a tool for making the Notes workspace look better, eg, with a custom background (hat tip, Ed). Available immediately.
• Central Desktop announced $7 million in first round financing, for product development and marketing activities. “Central Desktop has been bootstrapped and profitable since it was founded, Garcia says, and it’s reached a crucial point in its development, when it can either get acquired, or raise capital and try to build itself into a bigger company. Garcia sees an opening in providing collaborative tools for medium-sized businesses, and he hopes to establish Central Desktop as the leader. Some of that growth will involve sales and marketing, and some will involve expanding the tools. One of the first goals is to create more integration with Microsoft Outlook, which is used by 70 percent of Central Desktop’s customers. “
• Chordiant added collaborative decision making capabilities to Version 6.1 of its Decision Management tool. “Distributed collaborative development features in Chordiant Decision Management 6.1 enable teams located anywhere in the world to work independently on developing decision logic and strategies in support of the overall customer experience. This increases security, as “sensitive” strategies need to be viewed or modified only by those who are authorized to do so. Collaborative development also enables faster development of the overall business logic because component strategies can be developed in parallel.“
• ThoughtWorks released Version 2.0 of Mingle, its project collaboration and management application. New features: Card Trees (for visualizing tasks in projects), cross-project reporting, and new ways of integrating Mingle with other applications. Available immediately..

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• Four tips to effective blogging in business: (1) understand your market, (2) keep it simple, (3) call to action, and (4) keep it fresh. “A great blog can be a wonderful addition to your marketing activities. When you take the time to make your blog look professional, the content is fresh and accurate, you are using keywords to hit the people that are looking for the information that you can help them with and you have a clear mechanism for people to engage with you, a blog can drive new client leads to your business.“
• If you stay continually focused on the urgent things, you will never address the tasks that can help prevent future urgent demands.
• Some ideas on getting more done in your business: track what you are spending your time on, ignore time and focus on the tasks at hand instead (“flow”), delegate the things others can do, and scale back (take on less).