A Continuum of Collaboration Solutions

Pankaj Taneja in his article, The Collaboration Continuum: Which Solution is Right for You?, offers a conceptual framework for selecting collaboration solution (tools), based on the formality and needs of your organization. Pankaj reached out to us to offer a different approach to tools-selection, subsequent to our post on A Taxonomy of Collaboration Tools.

The proposed framework divides the collaboration continuum into 3 parts: i) Temporary Groups, ii) SMBs, and iii) Enterprises. The author then offers solutions – Freeeform Solutions, Workspace Model Solutions and Highly Structured Solutions – for each situation. Illustrative examples of tools for each type of solution are also included.

Which collaboration models do you use?

Update on 25 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• A Taxonomy of Collaboration Tools
• Communication Tools for Collaboration
• Organization Tools for Collaboration
• Editing Tools for Collaboration
• Engaging/Networking Tools for Collaboration
• A Continuum of Collaboration Solutions
• Keep it simple on the collaboration tools
• Open Letter to Collaboration Tool Providers

Comments

[Dana]

These types of collaborations or collisions in small teams, SMBs and enterprises are very common, and need to be managed in very different ways. I'm glad there are good processes and structures available for these types of businesses to follow.

[Pankaj Taneja]

Lokesh, thank you so much for appreciating my article and showing it to your readers. I would love to know what readers think of my "continuum".

[Lokesh Datta]

Comments from the LinkedIn discussion group, Official Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

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By Jim Pinsky, Senior Technology professional with proven successful experience in Strategic Alliances, Marketing, Business Development

Collaboration software is an exciting new market that can range from a shared web page to Acrobat to Google Wave to Sharepoint. Think of a Facebook for enterprises to allow employees to communicate better. Huge market opportunity.

As the article stated some of the solutions are free form and others are highly structured. The more structured solutions take a huge amount of integration effort. What is missing is a more packaged solution that ties into the enterprise applications such as SAP and Oracle Apps.