(PDF, 9 pages, 836 KB)
"Teams need to be informed about other internal or external people who have expertise in the specific project matter under consideration. Internal automatic discovery services constantly scan the minute-by-minute chatter of the organization—the emails and IMs, the documents being written, the web pages being read—to build a sense of who knows what, and to create bridges for communication between distinct experts. External automatic discovery services are less mature, but enable people to track certain keywords or phrases of interest."
Teams that converge around a specific purpose need to get the job done to the highest standards of quality within the shortest possible duration of time. The initial composition of the team is often determined by mandate, managerial direction, or simple geographical proximity, however organizations often contain many other people who could make an equally valid and constructive contribution. How does a team find out "who knows what" in the organization for the purpose of ratcheting up the quality of their deliverable? How do they discover who has prior experience in the matter at hand, or know who has expertise that could be used to the advantage of the team, its deliverable, and hence the overall organization? Pillar 7 is concerned with driving higher quality outputs over a shorter duration of elapsed time by making visible the other people inside and outside of the organization who could be tapped to contribute to the team’s objectives.
This paper discusses:
- The Situation Today ... how do teams find external experts and other resources to consult on problems today?
- Negative Effects on Team Productivity ... as a result of relying on existing ways of doing things.
- The Ideal Future Situation ... what are the key attributes of an intentional and proactive system for helping teams find other appropriately skilled people to be involved?
- Positive Effects for Team Productivity ... of using an intentional and proactive system for broadening the network.
- Technologies to Consider ... how Entopia, Tacit, AskMe and RSS syndication indexing services go some way toward addressing the ideal future situation.
What's Next?
This brings us to the end of this seven part series on the key IT components of an overall environment for facilitating team productivity. I will be refining this material through workshops and seminars during the remainder of this year, and through discussions with people that share an interest in helping organizations to be effective through a productive deployment of collaboration technology. Please drop me an email to discuss any of this material, either as it relates to your organization, or to your collaboration technology product strategies. All the best for your collaboration endeavors on behalf of internal teams.
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