Hey Everyone Let’s Go Mobile!
27 January 2010 Tweet Given the revolutionary changes in the wireless industry, how does this change the collaboration ecosystem or does it? Is this going to be an example of teams everywhere jumping on the wireless bandwagon? Personally, I want a smartphone, they are just too cool not to have at least one.
OK, so what? The devices are cool, and expensive, just look at the cost of those data plans; but, will this help teams collaborate better, is there a business case, how does the ecosystem change?
At one level, they would satisfy our need for speed. Team members can work anywhere and access their desktop applications; and, there are many applications for these devices. However, remember, this site is about people and making people more effective collaborators and not the technology. The technology or tool will not by itself enhance collaboration. This is one area where the technology and tools are very seductive – did I mention these devices are cool – just look at those beautiful screens and I can conference, get e-mail, access the Intranet, oops sorry, let’s get back to the people.
One vision of the wireless ecosystem is presented in the following diagram – from: Gaonkar, S., Li, J., Choudhury, R. R., Cox, L. and Schmidt A. “Micro-Blog: sharing and querying content through mobile phones and social participation.” ACM MobiSys, June 2008.
The wireless device is thought of as a “people-centric sensor”: data sensor + communication device + content querying device – where each device has access to the aggregated input from all other people.
Given this model, a few of the features enabled by these “people-centric sensors”:
- Amount of data collected will increase – this has pros and cons. There will be many more people inputting different types of information at any one time. Data could be more accurate. Who has access to the data?
- Speed with which decisions and communications are made will increase. Nothing waits for a person to return to their desk.
- Location is no longer a constraint. If a person needs to be in contact with customers or doesn’t have an office, then a wireless device can be an advantage. Is location a constraint today? Would there be tension between reducing travel cost and encouraging mobility?
- Presence is real and enabled. In many cases people will want to let others know their current availability status, but will this cause problems with the overall communications?
- Location-based services can be enabled, but does the collaboration need them?
- Given the ubiquitous nature of the devices, customers can be more easily brought into the collaboration.
- The number of tools and apps will increase. Who decides which tool is best or do different sub-teams start using different tools? Who supports the apps?
Should we all go wireless? Be careful!
Organizations will need a wireless strategy based on the 4Ps of effective collaboration. This would not be a trivial exercise. There are collaborative efforts that would be enhanced with the addition of mobility and there are other’s that could be negatively impacted. How will more data impact the overall Process and decision making? How are the People impacted by having a wireless device, will this help or hurt them? Some people might not want them – remember all the news about smartphone addiction and checking email at dinner and 3:00AM? Now I can attend a video conference in addition to checking e-mail. The definition of Place can change, does Place even matter if location is irrelevant? And, maybe most importantly, how will all of this impact the Purpose.
Think about it. I’m going shopping for a new wireless gadget!
Al Schmidt is a customer experience consultant with over 25 years of experience with a broad range of products, technologies and industries. He is focused on understanding how people use and incorporate technology into their day-to-day activities so that the overall experience, utility, and ease of use are optimized. Follow Al on Twitter.
Reader Comments (2)
Good ideas here. You really hit a nerve when you mention that location is no longer a constraint.
My best guess is that we saw successful companies extend real world experiences into the virtual or web world, originally with desktop computers attached to the internet. Mobility will extend what we can do with our desktop into the anywhere-anytime realm. Bandwidth, coverage, processing power, screen size, etc. are becoming less and less of a constraint for us to take our desktop apps on the road with us.
Of course, just as web applications raised the question about whether it was good or bad that we could take our work home, and thus our work day never ended, we now face the question about whether it is good or bad that we can take all our work with us wherever we go. I am in the camp that it is a good thing that I can "play hooky" for a few hours at one of my kids' events, even if it means I have to do a web conference on my mobile device another time while waiting for the soccer game to begin.
I asked the Unified Communications group on LinkedIn to provide their thoughts concerning this post. Simon Watkins provided the following. With his permission, I've added it here as a interesting perspective on the topic.
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Al,
Some thoughts:
"OK, so what? The devices are cool, and expensive, just look at the cost of those data plans; but, will this help teams collaborate better, is there a business case, how does the ecosystem change?"
I'm not sure the article answers these questions but does provide some food for thought. Does (or can) technology help teams collaborate better - I think the answer is a resounding yes. People collaborate, and to collaborate, they need effective and transparent communications mediums. Ranging from Air! (for voice/face to face meeting), through to the whole plethora of technologically enabled mediums ranging from synchronous to asynchronous. So outside of a physical face to face medium, collaboration is enabled by communications technologies. Improvement factors to collaboration are ease of use, interface, speed (and/or asynchronous effectiveness). Snail mail is a communications medium used to enable collaboration. It's slow, very asynchronous, but is a collaboration enabler. At the other end of the spectrum lie the advanced wireless technologies.
There is no doubt that presence enabled communications can reduce latency in collaboration, can target availability of the right people and thus improve the speed of decision making in business. As to whether or not there is a business case rests entirely on the business and its dependency on real-time or near real-time decision making. Thus every case on its merits! As the cost of the devices reduces and ubuiquity increases, there reaches a point where the business has to ask itself is there a business case NOT to embrace the medium.
The humble telephone (a communications tool that enables collaboration) does not require a business case for it's inclusion in 99.99999% of business. As other more advanced communications mediums become more prevalent and less costly, business should be asking themselves if they can afford not to embrace their benefits rather than the other way around.
Just my view :)
Simon Watkins - Officer Commanding, C4I (Command, Control, Communications, and Information) Squadron at RAF Leuchars
P.S. Lokesh and I have discussed what could be learned about collaboration from a military perspective where collaboration is critical.