Sources of Complexity in Collaboration

Despite its growing importance, we see a “collaboration gap” between the desired versus current state of collaboration in the enterprise. Managing complexity in collaboration to successful conclusions is a key to promoting a culture of collaboration in the enterprise. In this post, we identify the sources of complexity in collaboration using empirical evidence. The data used in this post comes from our primary research, Assessing the State of Collaboration: Return to Essentials. We shall provide more details on the study towards the end.

In Mind the “Collaboration Gap”, we highlighted that collaboration is growing in importance for the enterprise; yet, neither individuals are ABLE to collaborate as much as they WANT, nor the Enterprise is ABLE to have its employees collaborate as much as the enterprise WANTS.

Now let’s look at the empirical evidence for the sources of complexity.

Team size: Often many people involved, with typical team size is 3 to 10 participants (72%). As we know, complexity of any network (team interactions) grows exponentially with the number of nodes (team size).

How many people were directly involved in your ONE recently-completed collaboration experience?

Span of Collaboration Project: Half the projects span outside the company to partners, customers, and vendors, and few are restricted to the one group or department (23%). This creates multi-location teams, potentially in different time zones, with different work and societal cultures/norms, speaking with different levels of command of the languages involved.

What was the scope of your ONE recently-completed collaboration experience?

Diminishing Face-to-Face Interactions: Few of the collaboration teams meet face-to-face, with more than half meeting less than weekly or never.

How frequently did your team meet face-to-face during your ONE recently-completed collaboration experience?

Number of collaboration projects: Two-thirds with 2 to 5 projects and one-fifth with 6 or more. Each team has its own norms and dynamic, as we know, which adds to complexity.

How many collaboration projects do you have underway at a typical point in time?

We offer practical advice on how to manage complexity on all dimensions of our 4 Ps Model for Effective Collaboration: Purpose, People, Process and Place, in Collaboration isn’t what it used to be! Or, is it?.

About the Study, Assessing the State of Collaboration: Return to Essentials

We undertook this study on the State of Collaboration to understand and assess current practices in collaboration and future outlook on collaboration.

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.

The primary objective of the study was to assess the state of Collaboration among individuals and in organizations. This includes:

• expectations, purpose and level of collaboration,
• use of collaboration tools and their effectiveness, and
• barriers to collaboration.

Over 450 respondents participated in the survey conducted by All Collaboration in January and February 2010. Respondents came from all levels within organizations, all functional areas, a wide range of organization sizes, a wide range of industries with some concentration in consulting, and different regions although mostly North Americans. While there are some differences in emphasis, the general findings and conclusions are consistent across most of these groups.



What are other sources of complexity in collaboration? Do share your ideas!

Update on 25 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• Managing Complexity in Collaboration Demands Rigor
• Successful Collaboration: Good project management principles applied to dispersed teams
• Comments on the State of Collaboration