Collaboration Engineering: Reflections on 15 Years of Research & Practice

Collaboration Engineering (CE) is an approach for the design and deployment of repeatable collaborative work practices that can be executed by practitioners without the ongoing support of external collaboration professionals. Research on CE started in the early 2000s with studies on ways to transfer professional collaboration expertise to novices using a pattern language called thinkLets. Subsequent research focused the development of theories to explain key phenomena, the development of a structured design methodology, training methods, technology support, design theories, and various field and experimental studies focusing on specific aspects of the CE approach. This paper provides an overview of the different phases and key contributions of CE research and looks ahead at the research opportunities that are emerging as our society, organizations, technologies, and the nature of collaboration evolve

Extending the Contextual and Organizational Elements of Adaptive Structuration Theory in GSS Research

This paper addresses the variance in findings across Group Support Systems (GSS) studies by suggesting an expanded consideration of organizational and contextual elements in Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST). We propose a model of structuring tactics at three levels of abstraction: the meeting level, activity level, and real time intervention level. We illustrate this model with three specific purposeful structuring tactics — agendas, design patterns, and micro-processes —and present related propositions. In addition to reviewing the more familiar tactics of agenda setting and group facilitation, we illustrate an approach to creating GSS value based on invoking particular social structures. We accomplish this through consideration of a design pattern language for collaboration processes drawn from the Collaboration Engineering literature. We conclude by discussing how this model of structuring tactics advances theory and practice in the GSS domain

A Gaming Laboratory to Study Distributed Collaboration Processes.

Current events present many examples of situations where a fast and coordinated response is required from many and diverse organizations and stakeholders. Technology-mediated communication and collaboration may be the only option for getting things done in situations like these. There is a real need for research on the kinds of environments and processes that best support fast response on urgent tasks for virtual teams. The paper presents the development and initial test of a gaming laboratory to study such processes. The laboratory is adaptable to different kinds of situations. We discuss the design principles and implementation of the laboratory environment, along with lessons learned from the first experiences with it

A Collaborative Curriculum Review: Applicability to Higher Education Institutions

Curriculum review is mandatory for all higher education institutions (HEIs). The process brings together different stakeholders’ expertise to evaluate and revise an existing curriculum, positioning the field of study within the current market and industry trends. Although this process is repetitive, it still remains complex, majorly due to divergent stakeholders’ interests, varying levels of expertise, uncertain activity paths and multiple desired outcomes. The paper thus presents a Collaborative Curriculum Review Process (ColCuRP) to support the review of varying curricula in HEIs. We followed a mixed research approach (design science and action research) to design and evaluate the ColCuRP. It underwent four iterations during its evaluation and proved to be successful regards reduction in time for the review process, and supporting the different teams of departmental faculty to review Bachelors, Post Graduate Diploma, Masters and PhD curricula, at four HEIs in Uganda. Moreover, the ColCuRP can be used by inexperienced facilitators

Engineering E-Collaboration Processes to Obtain Innovative End-User Feedback on Advanced Web-Based Information Systems

In recent years, web-based information systems (WIS) and services have proliferated in all sectors of the economy. Unlike traditional IS, the development of WIS is evolutionary due to unceasing changes in the technological environment, regulation, and user needs. A new discipline, Web Engineering (WE), has emerged to promote systematic and disciplined approaches toward successful development of high-quality and ubiquitously usable WIS. User involvement is also a must for all organizations that aim to stay competitive and provide superior services for their customers. We have designed two structured e-collaboration processes for obtaining innovative end-user feedback on an advanced WIS under continuous evolution. Our feedback processes are purported for the perfective maintenance of WIS, where enhancements such as new functionality or increased efficiency are introduced continuously. We reflect on our experiences of two action research cycles through a Collaboration Engineering (CE) lens, and analyze the usefulness and suitability of the designed processes in these and other contexts. Our study contributes to the WE and CE streams of research by adding to the discussion of user-centered development and WIS evolution employing disciplined methods. For organizations, the developed e-collaboration processes offer novel means to involve end-users in their WIS development process. We believe that the designed processes may be applied in various WIS as well as in traditional IS contexts in different industries

A Repeatable Collaboration Process for Developing a Road Map for Emerging New Technology Business: Case Mobile Marketing

The unique and little practiced characteristics of mobile as a marketing medium create a need to set up an action and research agenda regularly to foster the development of the mobile marketing value system. Numerous stakeholders take part in the network to deliver the mobile services. Strengthening their inter-organizational relationships is critical for the emerging value system to evolve. Our paper employs Collaboration Engineering to address this undertaking by designing a standard process that actors in mobile marketing, as well as in other emerging new technology businesses, can use to collaboratively develop a road map for the future. The first field test of this process was conducted in London in connection with the Mobile Marketing Summit ’04 organized by Nokia. The results are promising. Together with senior management of 25 leading brand marketers and advertising agencies we were able to outline an extensive road map while strengthening the network formation in the field

Making Representations Matter: Understanding Practitioner Experience in Participatory Sensemaking

Appropriating new technologies in order to foster collaboration and participatory engagement is a focus for many fields, but there is relatively little research on the experience of practitioners who do so. The role of technology-use mediators is to help make such technologies amenable and of value to the people who interact with them and each other. When the nature of the technology is to provide textual and visual representations of ideas and discussions, issues of form and shaping arise, along with questions of professional ethics. This thesis examines such participatory representational practice, specifically how practitioners make participatory visual representations (pictures, diagrams, knowledge maps) coherent, engaging and useful for groups tackling complex societal and organizational challenges. This thesis develops and applies a method to analyze, characterize, and compare instances of participatory representational practice in such a way as to highlight experiential aspects such as aesthetics, narrative, improvisation, sensemaking, and ethics. It extends taxonomies of such practices found in related research, and contributes to a critique of functionalist or techno-rationalist approaches to studying professional practice. It studies how fourteen practitioners using a visual hypermedia tool engaged participants with the hypermedia representations, and the ways they made the representations matter to the participants. It focuses on the sensemaking challenges that the practitioners encountered in their sessions, and on the ways that the form they gave the visual representations (aesthetics) related to the service they were trying to provide to their participants. Qualitative research methods such as grounded theory are employed to analyze video recordings of the participatory representational sessions. Analytical tools were developed to provide a multi-perspective view on each session. Conceptual and normative frameworks for understanding the practitioner experience in participatory representational practice in context, especially in terms of aesthetics, ethics, narrative, sensemaking, and improvisation, are proposed. The thesis places these concerns in context of other kinds of facilitative and mediation practices as well as research on reflective practice, aesthetic experience, critical HCI, and participatory design

The effectiveness of virtual facilitation in supporting GDSS appropriation and structured group decision making

Since their introduction a quarter of a century ago, group decision support systems (GDSS) have evolved from applications designed primarily to support decision making for groups in face-to-face settings, to their growing use for “web conferencing,” online collaboration, and distributed group decision-making. Indeed, it is only recently that such groupware applications for conducting face-to-face, as well as “virtual meetings” among dispersed workgroups have achieved mainstream status, as evidenced by Microsoft’s ubiquitous advertising campaign promoting its “Live Meeting” electronic meeting systems (EMS) software. As these applications become more widely adopted, issues relating to their effective utilization are becoming increasingly relevant. This research addresses an area of growing interest in the study of group decision support systems, and one which holds promise for improving the effective utilization of advanced information technologies in general: the feasibility of using virtual facilitation (system-directed multi-modal user support) for supporting the GDSS appropriation process and for improving structured group decision-making efficiency and effectiveness. A multi-modal application for automating the GDSS facilitation process is used to compare conventional GDSS-supported groups with groups using virtual facilitation, as well as groups interacting without computerized decision-making support. A hidden-profile task designed to compare GDSS appropriation levels, user satisfaction, and decision-making efficiency and effectiveness is utilized in an experiment employing auditors, accountants, and IT security professionals as participants. The results of the experiment are analyzed and possible directions for future research efforts are discussed