Posted 10:32 a.m. by Jim Courtney

We incorporate collaboration into our business activities at TechTransform in various ways: email, QuickBase for asynchronous information sharing and archiving, WebArrow for synchronous desktop sharing. Rafe Needleman makes some excellent points that are reinforced by our experience:

effective collaboration requires a high degree of spontaneity -- make it easy to access and to work into the participant's workflow.

make the collaboration technology appear transparent - it needs be a concierge, not an inhibitor to smooth information exchange

presence is an important element; the list of your commonly accessed colleagues needs to be readily available (as in instant messaging interfaces) along with some indication of the participant's status

personal relevance - the participants need to see something "in it" for themselves. We are too driven to focus on our personal goals established to contribute to business success to be diverted by irrelevant discussion.

All Take, No Give: Why Collaboration Fails.pdf