Chapter 1: Groupware - The Changing Environment

By David Coleman

ISBN# 0-13-727728-8, Copyright 1997, 720 pp.
Now available through Prentice Hall

1.5 The Main Message - Coleman's Law

If you get only one message from this chapter, it is that groupware is not just technology, it is also social. Groupware is collaborative technology. That means it impacts the way people communicate with each other. Impacting communications results in impacting the way people work and eventually the structure of the organization. In other words, groupware is people as much as it is a tool that people use. Most organizations are able to handle the technology obstacles, because there are many technical alternatives available. The difficulty lies with the relationship between technology and the people who have to use it. Quantifying this reality results in Coleman's Law:

People resist change, and organizations resist change to an exponentially greater degree!

A corollary to this law is;

The larger the organization, the greater the change, or the more complex the project the greater the exponent for the resistance to change.

This resistance to change is not unique to groupware. It is true of any new technology or change in business process. The upside and downside of groupware is that these technologies have such a great impact on the way people work and communicate, that it magnifies the degree of change and can engender strong opinions either for or against the technology. Planning for change drastically improves the probability of success. Change Management is a group of practices and technologies that evolved out of the field of Organizational Development (OD). Change Management is critical with groupware.