Levels of Collaboration

By David Coleman

As I have said many times before, "there are almost 1000 tools and services we track that claim to have collaborative functionality." However, it has become more and more obvious to us here at Collaborative Strategies that "collaboration" does not mean the same thing to everyone.

Our definitions for communication, interaction, and collaboration are:

• Communication: A message is sent from person A to person B, and person B acknowledges receipt. There could be simple or complex information transferred in this message.

• Interaction: A message is sent from person A to person B, and person B acknowledges receipt, and person B sends a message back to person A in reply. The type of information that is transferred by an interaction is complex.
  
  
• Collaboration: Multiple interactions occur between two or more people for the transfer of complex information for some common goal over a specified period of time.

Although many may agree with our definition of collaboration, the spectrum of products available today is too broad to fit into one general definition of collaboration. We recently talked with the management team at LoadSpring Solutions, Inc. (www.loadspring.com). They have been thinking about collaboration for a long time and have identified six levels of collaboration and give an explanation and examples.

Collaboration Level 1 Messaging and Calendaring:

This is the most fundamental form of exchanging information in today’s Internet-centric business environment. Almost every organization uses some form of e-mail and calendaring tool to share data between themselves and outside organizations of all types.

Collaboration Level 2 Project Management:

Project management solutions enable organizations to organize specific project information and share that information across geographic boundaries. Typical project management tools include at time-management, cost-tracking and document revision histories.

Collaboration Level 3 Data Management:

At this level of collaboration, information is controlled down to the file level and, as in project management, typically includes revision tracking. However, at this level of collaboration, very sophisticated access controls and file dependencies are tracked and managed.

Collaboration Level 4 Neutral Data Access:

At this point in the collaboration model, application data can now be shared with multiple users in a neutral file format such as PDF, VRML, or IGES. Although it is not possible to make changes to the design data, multiple users can visually examine and typically markup the files without having the native application used to create the data.

Collaboration Level 5 Native Data Access:

This allows multiple users to share and interact with native application data. In a collaborative environment, authorized users can launch applications across the Internet and interact directly with data in its native file format.

Collaboration Level 6 Real Time Design Reviews:

This is the ultimate level of collaboration, involving the sharing of a native application session with multiple users at the same time. At this level, users can launch a single session of an application, then share that application with one or a thousand other users, each with the ability to access the controls of the software to make real time changes.

Collaborative Data Types

LoadSpring is not the only one thinking about collaboration taxonomies; we spend a lot of time doing that here at Collaborative Strategies also. One thing we have noticed over time is that the types of content or data that is used by collaborative tools and services breaks out into four data types:

• Objects: Can be any type of data, graphical, alphanumeric, audio, video, etc. The interesting thing about objects is that they not only bound or define a chunk of data, but that they also imply inheritance when that object is incorporated into some other meta-object.
  
  
• Documents: Are also a type of object, but because they are so common, and some applications only deal with this data type, we believe it should have its own category.
  
  
• Conversations: These can either be synchronous or asynchronous (i.e., chat or e-mail) or involve the content or messages passed between two or more people who are working in a coordinated manner.
  
  
• Tasks: These are actions taken as the result of a person interacting with any of the other three data types.

With these four data types you can pretty much imagine almost any collaborative situation and break it down to a process through with any or all of these data types flow.

Let’s see what data types are critical for each of the six levels of collaboration.

Table 1 - Data Types and Levels of Collaboration

Collaborative Features and Functions

With six levels and four data types, we have a very complex taxonomy shaping up. It is now time to bring this all together and show how a variety of different tool types use these levels and data types, and ultimately which collaborative features or functions are integral to each category in this taxonomy. In the beginning of this newsletter we show our "functional" taxonomy for collaborative tools. This taxonomy of eight categories has products or services put in a category based on the "major" functionality of that product. This does not mean that each of the eight categories are mutually exclusive, but rather most of the tools have functions that would fit in other categories in this taxonomy but their major functionality is still in one category. The eight categories of tools in collaboration are:

1. e-learning
2. real time collaboration tools (RTC) (audio, video, and data conferencing)
3. distributed project management tools (DPM) (including knowledge management (KM))
4. collaborative portals
5. collaborative CRM (customer resource management) (cCRM)
6. e-Community
7. virtual workplace and process (asynchronous collaboration tools and workflow)
8. unified and wireless (the underling infrastructure to support collaboration)

Table 2 examines a functional taxonomy for collaboration and looks at what data types and levels of collaboration are common to that product category.

Legend: DT= collaborative data type; O=object; D= document; C= conversation; T= task

Table 2 - Categories, Levels, and Data Types

Your head is probably spinning with all these details and analysis. However, what it all boils down to is that different collaborative tool types work with different data types, using specific collaborative functions to support different levels of collaboration. Is this complexity really necessary? My answer would be "yes" for several reasons:

• People often apply the wrong tool to the wrong process or problem.
• Collaborative tool categories are often defined by the features and functions of the tools in the category (i.e., can you imagine a distributed project management tool that did not include calendaring/scheduling or task management?).
• No one type of tool provides all the features/functions that your company might need.
• As organizations get more sophisticated in working with these collaborative tools, they are able to look for specific collaborative functions that fit into their current business processes, rather than stand alone collaborative tools and applications.
• Collaboration really focuses on the interactions between people. As organizations become more sophisticated, they begin to realize that the degree of complexity of the interaction increases every time you add another person, and that some collaborative tools are better for one-to-one interactions, while others are best for small or large groups.

Conclusions

"Collaboration" does not really have one definition. It means different things to different people. Unfortunately, we all do not have a common context for the concept of collaboration. This leads to confusion, and ultimately to failed expectations in the products or product category. This product category is over a decade old at this point, and is starting to get popular with mainstream businesses. We need to establish a common context for collaboration as well as make collaboration technologies not be an impediment for collaborative behaviors!

David Coleman is the Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies LLC and the editor of "Inside Collaboration". He is the author of two books on groupware, and many of the monthly Hot Tips on the collaborate.com Web site as well as this newsletter. When he is not consulting for vendors or users of collaboration technologies, David is often engaged in both in-person and Web-based presentations to educate all types of organizations about the benefits and successful techniques for collaboration. He is also working on a new book on e-collaboration. He welcomes your comments, questions, and requests, and can be reached by e-mail at davidc@collaborate.com, on AOL Instant Messenger at davidc121, or by telephone at 415/282-9197.