Here we list the comments we received on the State of Collaboration from our survey respondents.

We undertook this study on the State of Collaboration to understand and assess current practices in collaboration and future outlook on collaboration. Over 450 respondents participated in the survey conducted by All Collaboration in January and February 2010.

Key findings. Three main messages emerged from our survey responses.

1. Complex collaboration is already a significant work activity for many people, and will only grow in importance.
2. Successful collaboration requires mostly the good principles of project management applied to dispersed teams.
3. Keep it simple on the collaboration tools.

Open-ended comments from survey respondents

I am extremely - both professionally and scientifically – fascinated about cultural determinants of ability/willingness to collaborate and what is the role of workplace in shifting into more collaborative attitude?

You should have asked how spread out the teams are?  We all sit next to each other with no one outside the office.

Tools are secondary. Having the right team with the same vision and goals is key. Timelines/deadlines also are critical.

Collaboration is different when you collaborate globally and have to collaborate over time zones, cultures and organizational borders. This also has implications for collaboration tools that can be used.

Training and education is the key.  For example, many people do not know the advanced collaborative features of the most basic collaboration tools... Outlook.

What ever happened to good old fashioned meeting?

Most collaboration tools are  built for a single organization and are hard to use securely across organizations.  There is an unmet need in the marketplace for secure multi-company collaboration tools.

In a collaborative environment...need tablet integrated to share real time sketches, diagrams, designs. I'm looking for better, more accessible white board tools.

Time, resourcing and rewards are critical to creating a context for collaboration. The younger generation are highly interconnected so their collaboration challenge may be the quality of the output and ownership for results.

I am interested to hear the results of this survey. I am in the process of gathering theoretical background on collaboration and writing collaboration procedures for several teams.  What difference do you see between collaboration and cooperation?

Working across timezones (US/UK/Australia) posed unique challenges - and often we had pairwise conversations.

I may have misread some of the questions but in the activities I have been working on email still has to come out on top because of the pivotal role it plays within an organisation. In my view it is not necessarily a true collaboration tool in the same way that SharePoint, IM, Webconferencing is.

Everyone says that they want to collaborate, but hardly anyone does actually collaborate. In most organisation it's a whole-lot of lip-service. The reason is two fold; a) people don't see their supervisors as promoters and activists of collaboration... culture of collaboration doesn't emerge from delegation., and b) the context is not created mostly... the 'what is in it for me' is not established and hence team members don't mostly see the reason to 'let go' and collaborate.

Face-to-Face is the BEST tool.

I would like to know if successfully collaborating orgs/cultures have had to find someone to lead the effort to higher collaboration across the organization.

Audio and web conf capabilities seem to be highest on the list for business to business collaboration since they are the most jointly accessible.  A major shortfall in some collaboration schemes is getting "notified" that there is something changed or added for you to be concerned with.  File sharing for example.  Wave falls short - unless I'm logged in, I may miss "messages".  Also collaboration sessions need to be easier to join.  One tough to start up the audio, pull up the web or other session, see who's joined and go!

Need more customizable tools for different tasks, like project management, marketing effort, sales progress etc...

This survey is poorly structured.  It assumes that collaboration tools are used in isolation.  When a normal meeting involves use of shared calendars to arrange it, an audio bridge, LiveMeeting to share applications, and reference to files that are on SharePoint, I cannot effectively answer the questions presented earlier in the questionnaire.  The value is not from use of any single one of these tools, but rather from the ability of all team members to readily access them and use them in parallel as necessary.

I'd like to use a mindmap in an online wiki, to work with a team on a mindmap.

Can't live without these sorts of tools/ facilities.  Have found things like electronic white boards, DropBox, MindMeister and others to be extremely useful both for collaboration and archival structure of complex projects.

You had listed project management as a collaboration tool. I think that using collaboration tools is part of successful project management, but project management itself is not a collaboration tool.

The quality of project management is probably the most important factor of all.

"Collaboration" software sucks. It's too complex, and people don't trust it (either to work, or to be secure). That's why email is so popular.    PS. Join the 21st century. Lots of people use their phones, not their computers!

Our organization is all about collaboration, in fact it's called The Fullerton Collaborative.  It joins people from business, non-profits, churches, schools and the city to improve life for everyone in the city.

Collaboration is essential for my business - I share business with related professionals, without whom I would be out of business.

You have MISSED an ingredient that Gen-X and younger wouldn't dare admit is necessary: leadership! Today's business tries far too hard to be "collaborate", and within large complex project environments it is, of course, the way things get done. However, in smaller entrepreneurial environments, there isn't the time to "be nice" about everyone's point-of-view and so on...there must be speed and leadership to cut through the bullshit of working "in groups"; that is the domain of salaried employees!!

I think you missed the importance of planning in your survey.  Additionally the importance of integrating proven tools and approaches with these new collaborative elements/tools.

Trust is vital for collaboration to be effective.  People working on collaborative projects need to take the time to build trust in their team and in their efforts.  When this takes place across companies--especially using virtual collaboration tools, team members need to be even more responsible to make sure that trust is established and maintained and to revisit trust (at least briefly) in every encounter to insure that progress is ongoing.

I have used Cisco's Telepresence product and it is excellent because it allows the simultaneous use of video and whiteboard at a good resolution. However, its high cost and usability challenge makes it impractical to use on every project. Their offering needs to be translated to the desktop to be most effective.

Without collaboration across all levels, we lose our best shot at creativity and being competitive.

In my experience, it’s not the tools that are the issue.  It’s the constant distractions (often brought on by tools) and culture that get in the way.

It takes longer but the results are better.

Being a small company, most of my collaboration is with other companies I partner with.  They are not really suppliers, they are more partners.  I think that a lot of small business partner with other companies like I do.  Your survey didn't address this.

Most of the tools are poorly understood and are often poorly implemented. They are too hard to learn to use and fail to balance natural rhythms associated with content that should be pushed vs content that should be pulled.

Senior Management must use and endorse!

There is a balance of what collaboration can do to make things dysfunctional.  Some leaders are so fully scheduled throughout the week with what looks like scheduled collaboration, that there is actually very little time to actually talk about or think about the real issues.  This may also mean that the well established collaborative efforts suck all the air out of the new efforts that need a collaborative approach.  Also with the development of new capabilities, sometimes it may be more effective to not collaborate and also someone to craft a starting point that others can then react to and adjust.

Risk Management and quality control of work product are a big deal and remain unaddressed by most people advancing collaboration cause (including this survey) -- people can't collaborate effectively if these issues are not resolved up-front to everyone's satisfaction and managed throughout the process.

File sharing tools need to improve. Most employees create some type of organizational structure on their PCs to store documents that they have created/own - this structure is often not replicated in the collaborative toolset and therefore the toolset becomes nothing more for participants to "dump/post" files - no one is managing what is posted so the tool becomes ineffective. Participants don't look to the tool as the primary source/location for documentation.

The survey assumes a detailed working knowledge of collaboration as a business practice.  For me this was not explicit knowledge that I had, but the survey did a good job of defining and explaining collaboration principles to allow me to comment accurately.

Must have a business purpose and processes in place.  Too many projects focus on the collaborative technology and ignore the processes (and people!).

During my uni studies I have used Twitter, Ning, Blogs, wikis and other social community tools and really enjoyed the process.  We have a forum at work for our department but at the moment, I am the only one using it.

Everyone talks about collaboration.  But collaboration requires shared goals, trust, and a good process.

We are still exploring ways to capture "tribal knowledge", make it more available, and keep it more up to date.

It is only as good as the process that manages it... in fact, why not have it manage itself AND us at the same time?

There are certain restrictions in regulated industries that preclude the use of many of the Web 2.0 tools.  We also need to be very aware of confidentiality issues.

There is an unspoken assumption in this survey that collaboration is necessarily remote. Useful collaborative techniques and tools are also available for collocated workers, but these are not covered here.

The collaboration list in this research is missing many key component of collaboration in today's world, including expert directory and exchange, blogs, workspaces. The business collaboration platforms are much richer than the list provided.

There are a lot of social networking and professional networking sites on the web.  The younger generations tend to spend their lives on these sites letting everyone in the world know what they are doing, etc.  How safe is this environment?

Sometimes face-to-face is required but often, given the right tools and facilitators, many of the things I do I get done online.

There is an element of networking that is important for people to feel comfortable in collaborating, i.e.,  The "touch" aspect vs. the technology.

Although I think that IM is a great communication tool, it does not fit well in collaboration situations because it is one on one and want to share ideas and retain them for the entire group to see and utilize.

Collaboration requires TRUST!

Totally believe in the use of Information Technology as an enabler....

In the content delivery group we create application help and end user training courses. Through our adoption of DITA writing we collaborate extensively within our worldwide team.

My organization does not do a good job of collaboration.

Collaboration is a key value for our organization.  It is introduced in our Onboarding process and reinforced constantly.  So we are good at it.  Where I see issues is new hires who are used to a more email based communication process who are hesitant to pick up the phone or schedule a call or WebEx.  But once they get the hang of it they realize these are the best ways to form strong collaborative groups at our company.

The biggest impediments to collaboration are poor planning, ineffective communication skills, and politics.

There is great value in this practice and with good project management, clear expectations and good communication. It is very successful no matter the medium.

I find that people are eager to learn these tools and excited about the prospect.  They worry though because the training to use them and the "learning curve" is not always allowed.

The biggest problem for government workers is the high level of security IT systems are under. There are so many ways that collaborative tools can be misused so there is a tendency to just ban everything.

Time and competing priorities are probably the biggest inhibitors to collaboration. Most people want to collaborate and help, but frequently are too busy to do it in a timely manner.

The value of collaboration is demonstrated in outcomes.  The best collaboration tools in the world have little value if they are not relevant to success, whereas even the simplest tool, well-used and linked to productivity, is a godsend.

I've found that collaboration works best when team members are given a goal and the members are clear about their duties which will help to achieve the goal.  There must be a deadline and frequent updates/deliverables in order to keep track of progress.

There is not enough of it between doctors and  nurses and nonclinical staff and patients, etc. It is not encouraged by most senior level executives and directors.

Females appreciate its importance more than males however, the performance/end result among both are the same.

I feel the biggest obstacle to collaboration is a departments fear of losing control.  People are very territorial.

It is absolutely essential that time is spent by management to engender a genuine "buy in" to the process which assists collaboration, contact and sharing experience and expertise between employees therefore supporting improved productivity. It is not a system being enforced "just" to increase output.

My organization has not adopted some collaboration tools due to cost, bandwidth, and security issues, but more tools are coming in the next year or so.

In our organization, I believe it’s the culture that needs the most help.

The corporate culture is the main reason for what seems to be a reluctance to collaborate with others.   We more or less learn to keep our knowledge to ourselves to increase job security.

Looking for good forum software that is also e-mail enabled, with branching structure so sub-discussions can easily be announced to the whole group.

Digital collaboration is become more important in the development of training materials.  I see its growth as a continuing process.

Working in Africa means that I often find myself working with client groups whose are composed of wildly divergent players or stakeholders. Who have vastly different cultural outlooks and often severely opposing underlying scripts and objectives.  Black participants tend to collaborate is more readily than other participants...cross cultural collaboration can be a mine-field and takes an enormous amount work to succeed.

It is not possible to over collaborate, but it is possible to become dependent upon it.  Some team members will freeze up until they can share and discuss ideas with another team member.  Instilling independent action is just as important at the appropriate level.  Roles must be clearly understood.

Culture is key.

The desire to collaborate and focus on an objective organizational goal is often impeded by "hidden Agendas".  Often, team members who may have been strong performers in their identified discipline, have been moved into management positions before they have the required skills to 'switch' to a more strategic and global vision.

Collaboration is difficult when people are insecure about their job and status in the organization.

Collaboration requires a win-win perspective.  Our culture is more about win-lose  as we have a great lack of trust and compete internally.

Teachers have always collaborated with each other. It is now a focus of the district I work for and has become a forced event. I have found that the process is more effective when the members are willing participants. I think that the collaborative process needs to be supported by administration, but the process and the members need to be selected by those that are implementing the project and are knowledgeable about what members/resources are needed. This cuts down on unnecessary participants and allows for a better flow of communication. As specialty areas are required, they should be used to facilitate the process.

It won't work if people just think its the new communication - fundamentally a lot more to it than that.

I am new to using collaborative technologies such as wikis and this has affected how I have answered some of the questions.

With one client I work heavily on a social networking platform, but you do not list that as one of the tools.

Check out Google Docs and Salesforce.com if you are serious about collaboration.

There is a need to communicate the best tools now available and why.

This got me thinking.  I do a lot of collaboration that I don't even think about as collaboration.  The answers are VERY project dependent.