Collaboration – not so much about technology

I have long held the belief that successful collaboration is not so much about getting fancy technology and much more about process, culture and careful deployment and use of the technologies you do have.  I was therefore pleased to see the results of a survey on collaboration that S. Ann Earon reported on Collaboration Loop, the questions related to audio conferencing, web conferencing and video conferencing.  What’s interesting is that she reports:

While their responses sound logical and intuitive, when further study was done to determine how well their recommendations were put into practice, it was sad to note that many forget the obvious.

This my experience as well,  unfortunately its all too common for project success criteria to focus mainly on successful deployment of technologies and not on successful adoption of those technologies in the medium to long term, this tends to drive a lot of poor decisions which are definitely not the fault of the project team,  but need to be layed at the door of those who design the projects in the first place.  It’s useful to look at the responses in more detail:

Audioconferencing
•    Make it easy to use
•    Quantify cost savings
•    Better describe internal PBX capabilities
•    Provide training & case study experiences
•    Purchase good quality equipment
•    Trial usage, create awareness
•    Adopt self service reservationless model
•    Promote, promote, promote
Webconferencing
•    Do a business case and promote it
•    Use it and see how it works
•    Remember that not everyone is web friendly
•    Provide training & case study experiences
•    Advertise and don’t restrict use
•    Explore all products & standardize on one
•    Make it easy to use
Videoconferencing
•    Make it easy to use
•    Provide open house demonstrations
•    Quantify cost savings
•    Provide training
•    Provide a user competency test
•    Pick up charges under general overhead to promote usage
•    Get senior management endorsement
•    Make it part of the corporate culture that everyone be trained & required to use the technology
•    Promote, promote, promote
•    Hire a consultant