Here is a great pile on on thread about collaboration tools ... Are these the right reasons the tools fail? If they are is backward mapping the right way to make them work?
Link: Anecdote: Why people don't use collaboration tools.
When faced with the choice of learning new technology and chatting to colleagues on the phone and email to get a job done, if it can be done with what they already know they will go with that.
Collaboration tools work best when your collaborators are geographically distributed and in other time zones and I wonder how many teams have that as a situation? Sure, globalisation is spreading and small, nimble operators are connecting using these tools, but how many large corporations are active users? I know IBM is and I would imagine technology firms would be at the vanguard. I was surprised however when PriceWaterhouseCoopers consultants arrived in IBM because there were unfamiliar with collaboration tools and disinterested in using them.
It works best when all the collaborators are equally enthusiastic and capable in using the tool. It just takes a handful of influential members of a team to stop using the tool for the tool to be abandoned.
So we want to really backward map these comments and develop a training and roll-out plan that works to counter these forces...
* find people that must work with one another to get the job or task accomplished.
* Help people understand the size and potential of collaboration beyond the team sizes they have worked with in the past.
* Develop communication norms and collaboration skills. Work with initial set of people that are most prone to collaboration and have the skills to do it off line too.
* start collaboration on simple low stress and iteratively done work (don't start with big projects). Projects that build a culture of learning and doing together. (who knows who?, logistics for a meeting, note sharing form events, etc.)
* Use the tools to support existing networks of people that know each other and expand from there.
* Set up a template of the kinds of questions that can regularly keep collaboration moving.
* Help people get familiar with tools and how they are useful.
* Only use easy and proven tools that are easy to learn and use.
* Set up the use of the tools into a situations where the scale and distribution make traditional email and phone coordination not a workable option (like a campaigns to fight injustice, stop global warming, build a peace movement, etc.) Slowly migrate people to use the tools as demand dictates.
* Invest in the process and coaching things along to reap the benefit down the road.
