Using IT in group work the next generation

1

• Using IT in group work the next generation!
• Presented by
• Mr Roger Tagg

Experience. The Difference.
2
Whats the problem with group work, particularly
in offices?

• Pressure to get more work done with fewer
  resources
• There is more work because there is
• more regulation and legal liability
• more competition and dispersion of effort
• more staff turnaround and organizational change
• Many workers feel burnt out and dont feel like
  killing themselves to do the impossible
• Workers are tied to their desktop computers
• so are losing the benefit of human/group contact
• F2F is considered almost unnecessary
• The help IT brings to groups is still patchy

3
Groupware 101 the 4 scenarios of group work
4
How is IT supposed to help group work?

• Groupware - software
• Sending
• Sharing
• Coordinating (processes)
• Learning

• Groupware Infrastructure
• Client computers
• Servers
• Operating Systems
• Networks

5
Groupware SEND functions

• Email style asynchronous
• Attachments (why not links?)
• Reliable messaging?
• Event notification

• Chat style synchronous
• Finger to finger
• Security scare?

• Videoconferencing
• Ersatz face to face F2F
• But its not good enough yet

6
Groupware SHARE functions

• Bulletin boards, e-conferences
• Address lists and directories
• Calendars
• Room and equipment booking
• Data sharing
• ALL data
• not just particular databases
• Document management
• Collaborative design spaces
• e.g. e-whiteboards

7
Groupware COLLABORATE functions

• Voting
• Negotiation support
• Commenting and annotating
• Task forwarding
• Enforcing rules
• Workflow management (guiding a whole process)
• Project management (time and resources)
• Contract management

8
Groupware LEARN functions

• Knowledge management
• Organizational memory

• Process mining

• Process help and guidance

Not much here yet mainly research
9
How is Groupware sold?

• Usually as a toolkit of multiple tools, e.g.
  email, e-conferencing, group calendars, global
  address lists, task handlers, workflow etc

• With a client component for the individual user
  and a server component for the sharing

• As a general purpose package, e.g. Microsoft
  Outlook/Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes/Domino,
  Novell GroupWise
• Special purpose programs
• Could be add-ons to the above packages

10
In what way is current Groupware falling short?

• Symptom most users do not venture beyond e-mail,
  chat and sending files
• Who uses group calendaring? Or task forwarding?
• Support for many functions is not well integrated
• e.g. shared processes and knowledge management
• Data within the groupware toolkit are difficult
  to organize and relate to data in other systems
• e.g. emails and attachments
• Groupware appears to the user as yet another
  separate application
• No easy way of integrating with the other IT
  systems that group members may be using
• Email (and chat) have big security holes

11
Example of a human problem with current Groupware
- the Prattle syndrome

• A group leader set up a shared workspace
  (bulletin board, discussion forum etc)
• Group members were hard pressed just to answer
  their email, phone and face-to-face emergencies
• So they rarely or never got to log on to the
  discussion forum
• Pull is inappropriate for over-busy teams
• Push might be better, e.g.
• Pop-up messages, or Ticker tape line
• Generate urgent email messages
• but might lead to more overload

12
Cant we do better than this?Areas for
improvement in the next generation

• Security (the current crisis)
• Collaboration support
• Knowledge management
• Intelligence in the infrastructure
• Data integration
• Application integration
• The user interface
• Consistency
• Learnability
• Intelligent support

13
Security wish list

• Virus resistance
• Spam filtering
• Anti-phishing measures
• Spyware detection
• ... Without some action on these, some observers
  predict that email may collapse in a couple of
  years

See http//www.antiphishing.org/ also Business
Week Tangled in the Phishing Lines at
http//www.whiotv.com/money/3447078/detail.html
14
Collaboration support wish list

• Awareness of groups and memberships
• Integrated flexible workflow
• Event-based rules
• e.g. Notify me if anything gets added to a
  particular folder)
• Sometimes called small workflow

15
Knowledge management wish list 1

• Answering the question how the XXXX do I do
  this?
• Hypertext procedure manuals (XML)
• Big backlog of existing manuals to re-encode
• Diagrams with you are here arrows
• Guided process execution (Wizards)
• The context should be deduced from the users
  previous actions
• Reference to a file of who in the group to ask
  experts

XXXX
16
Knowledge management wish list 2

• Answering the question what ARE our processes,
  anyway?
• The group may start with few - or no -documented
  processes
• If actual activities can be recorded, then we can
  use
• Process Mining detecting possible patterns in
  events
• Learning interacting with group members to
  establish patterns as approved processes

17
Intelligence in the Infrastructure

• Try dropping an email, whose message text
  contains a date, time and place, on your calendar
  icon!
• Text Categorization
• Making sense out of free text and using it to
  categorize the whole object, e.g. for filing
  purposes
• Is already used in some Spam filters
• Researchers are still arguing over what are the
  best algorithms
• Software vendors seem nervous about launching it
  for wider public use
• compare speech recognition, automatic translation

18
Data Integration wish list

• We already have Database management and Document
  management, but we still need
• Consistent filing for all data
• whatever tool or application it was created in
• Correlation between all forms of data
• a lot of data currently is still unstructured and
  unsuitable for linking to more structured data
• e.g. from an email about a student, how do I find
  his/her enrolments and results?
• Resolving terminology clashes
• Group members may use different data names or XML
  tags
• Need support from common Ontologies

19
Well, couldnt an old-fashioned secretary do all
this?

• Our employer cant afford to let us all have one
• Understands a little about what you and the
  group - do
• Understands the processes you work in
• Knows where all the data is, and how to access it
  and combine it
• Anticipates what you want to do next
• IT researchers have tried to build Intelligent
  Agent software to plug this gap

20
Application Integration wish list
We would like to link our group activity to

• Common Office tools
• e.g. word processing, spreadsheets
• Commercial IT applications
• e.g. accounts receivable, production planning, HR

21
User interface wish list

• Dashboard
• A set of controls on the screen that assemble a
  users total work
• Unified personal task list
• Tasks may derive from emails, workflow,
  applications
• Shared workspaces
• Mobility and going off line
• Non-keyboard/screen devices
• What about speech recognition?

22
A Dashboard example for group work
23
Dashboard - implications

• Has to be tailored to each user (may belong to
  several groups)
• Need to designate which elements are group and
  which are individual
• Screen space problem
• Multiple displays
• Mobile-friendly versions needed

24
Intelligence to support the Groupware user
interface

• Drop Box
• React to drag and drop in the scope of a
  dashboard
• Deduce context from recent user actions
• User Agent (Virtual Private Secretary)
• Aware of and learns - one particular group
  members needs and preferences
• Must do better than the MS Office paperclip
• Group Agent
• Knows or learns a groups goals and processes
• Different groups need different agents

25
LiveNet a research prototype from University
of Technology Sydney
26
Strong and weak pointsof current LiveNet

• Specifically supports group working
• Aims to support tacit knowledge exchange
• Includes some small workflow
• Includes some process knowledge management
• Tested in a cooperative business proposal
  preparation and review example
• --------------------------------------------------
  ---------------------------------------
• Adding of agents is current research
• --------------------------------------------------
  ---------------------------------------
• Doesnt seamlessly integrate with ordinary email
• Doesnt have a component customization system for
  integrating with external applications
• Isnt yet dashboard-friendly or mobile-friendly

27
What if anything is happening commercially, and
when (1)?

• Microsoft
• Had trumpeted a new generation Kodiak
• Have just dropped that name, and announced that
  they will drip-feed the features instead
• Client tools have inconsistent features
• 3 types of Outlook, especially for mail clients
• OWA behaviour even varies between browsers
• Are possibly concentrating on beating the email
  crisis

28
What if anything is happening commercially, and
when (2)?

• IBM only rumours from insiders that
  something big is coming soon
• Novell GroupWise Major Release
  Aspen(tentatively scheduled for late 04/early
  05 ) Under consideration
• Document Management revisited (improved UI,
  native doc store, reporting tools)
• A bunch of really cool stuff Im not going to
  talk about today, because I dont want to tip my
  hand to the competition just yet
• Source http//www.novell.com/brainshare2003/apps/
  published/IO131/26

29
What are the industry observers and magazines
saying?

• Still preoccupied by Instant Messaging
• Recently highlighting the threat to the future of
  email, and hence Groupware
• Suggest that the future may be modular groupware
  (only install what users will use)
• A fashionable view the next generation is
  Knowledge Management

30
Brakes on the next generation

• Getting over the email crisis first
• The immaturity of text categorization
• Any software has to be fairly open, since not all
  group members may use the same software products
• May need a stack of new standards
• That could spell death in any language just
  look at the example of aligning business
  processes in B2B e-Commerce

31
If it happens

• Will work become any more enjoyable?
• Depends if IT can really deliver a Virtual
  Secretary
• If it reduces the time humans sit in front of a
  machine, it might improve productivity as well as
  enjoyment
• What makes groups work well is team spirit, human
  trust
• Will the new generation do anything to relieve
  "information overload"?
• Unless sanity prevails, management will continue
  to expect staff to process more and more data
• IT will struggle to keep one step behind!

32
Will group workers in offices take to the new
tools?
Well, they certainly gave the current generation
the thumbs down, with few exceptions

• The tools have to be easy to learn
• They must all look and feel consistent
• They must have solved all questions of
  integration of different data formats and
  terminologies
• They have to show some obvious payoff
• An early success story is needed
• They need to become fashionable
• like Filofaxes?

33
Will managers be persuaded to make the necessary
investment?

• Probably not voluntarily
• IT investment is not top of most managers
  priorities
• Overload? What overload?
• Traditional executive culture sweeps problems of
  overload under the carpet
• Wait until there is a crisis
• A bad experience or lawsuit involving a big
  organization might be the only trigger for action

34
Conclusion

• We need something badly, to avoid drowning in
  e-work
• The IT industry can provide some of the answers
  now
• Its risky predicting when a new generation of
  software will happen
• Investment by managers and take-up by users are
  both uncertain
• The security crisis will have to be fixed first
• Any questions?

35

• FINAL in this series
• New Technology Innovation from promise to
  impact
• Professors Paula and Paul Swatman
• Wednesday 30th June
• General Purpose building (Room GP1-09)
• Mawson Lakes campus

Experience. The Difference.