Chapter 2
Summary: Collaboration has a major role in
business, especially among team members. It is important to give effective
critical feedback to teammates and team leaders. One must be well informed
before making any decisions. Collaboration tools can be used to improve team
communication, to manage shared content and to manage tasks.
Topics and details
Q2-1: What Are Two Key Characteristics of Collaboration?
Cooperation:
“a group of people working together, all doing essentially the same type of
work, to accomplish a job.” Collaboration:
“a group of people working together to achieve a common goal via a process of
feedback and iteration.” Two Key Characteristics of Collaboration are feedback
and iterations. Importance of Effective Critical Feedback: teammates
learn from each other through collaboration. It’s difficult to learn if there
are no different ideas expressed.Guidelines
of Giving and Receiving Critical feedback: The most important collaboration
skill is giving and receiving critical feedback. Students should set feedback guidelines
when they first meet. Warning: Many
people do not understand the importance of collaboration and prefer to do the work
alone, but should remember that everyone has different backgrounds and experiences.
Q2-2: What are Three Criteria for Successful
Collaboration?
Hackman’s three criteria for
successful team collaboration are successful outcome, growth in team
capability, and meaningful and satisfying experience.
Successful
Outcome: The team needs to accomplish their goal whether making a decision,
solving a problem, and creating a work product within the time limit and budget. Growth in Team Capacity: Teams often last months to years in
business. Over time, the team becomes more efficient, develops better work
processes and inter-group communication. Meaningful
and Satisfying Experience: If a task is perceived as important to the
group, then it will become meaningful.
Q2-3: What are the Four Primary Purposes of
Collaboration?
The four primary purposes of collaboration are becoming
informed, making decisions, solving problems, and managing projects. Becoming Informed: “The goal of the informing is to ensure, as
much as possible, that team members are conceiving information in the same way.” Making
Decisions: Operational
decisions: “are those that support operational, day-to-day activities.” Managerial decisions: “are
decisions about the allocation and utilization of resources.” Strategic decisions: “are
those that support broad-scope, organizational issues.” Structured decision: “there is an
understood and accepted method for making a decision. Unstructured decision: “there is no
agreed-on decision-making method.” Decision processes and their decision types are
loosely related. Collaboration is less needed in structured decisions, but is
crucial in unstructured decisions. Solving Problems: Problem: “a perceived difference
between what is and what ought to be.” The most important task for a problem-solving
collaboration group is defining the problem. Managing Projects:
There are four stages to managing projects: starting, planning, doing, and
finalizing.
Q2-4: What are the Requirements for a Collaboration
Information System?
Collaboration
information system: “an information system that supports collaboration.” The Five Components
of an IS of Collaboration: Project Data: “data that is part of the collaboration’s work
product.” Project metadata:
“data used to manage the project.” Primary
Functions: Communication and Content Sharing- “there are numerous
alternatives to constructing an IS” to meet the requirements of Hackman’s three
criteria.
Q2-5: How Can You Use Collaboration Tools to Improve Team
Communication?
Team communications are important to collaborative projects
since there is a need to provide feedback. Synchronous communication: “when all team members
meet at the same time” i.e. conference call or meeting. Asynchronous communication: “when teams do
not meet at the same time” i.e. different time zones. Virtual meetings: communication technology
where people do not meet up at the same place and possibly not the same time. Screen-sharing applications:
“enables user to view the same whiteboard, application, or other display.” Webinar: “virtual meeting
in which attendees view one of the attendees’ computer screens for a more formal
and organized presentation.” Videoconferencing:
using webcams on computers to have “face-to-face” without the physical
attendance i.e. Google Hangouts, WebEx, and Skype for Business. Email: usually used by
teams who need asynchronous meetings. Discussing forums: an alternative to emails. Team surveys: members
create a list of questions and other members answer them.
Q2-6: How Can You Use Collaboration Tools to Manage
Shared Content?
For sharing office documents, many use Microsoft Office,
LibreOffice, or Apache OpenOffice. It is important to content share, enable iteration,
and provide feedback. Team members need to share both project data, work-product
data, and project metadata.
Shared
Content with No Control: “email is simple, easy, and readily available” but
it is not good for collaboration. File Server: “simply a computer that stores files.” Servers are
better than email because there is only one storage location, but if two people
are making changes at the same time, one’s changes will be lost. Shared
Content with Version Management on Google Drive: Version management: “track changes to
documents and provide features and functions to accommodate concurrent work.” Google Drive: “a free
service that provides a virtual drive in the cloud into which you can create
folders and store files. Shared
Content with Version Control: Version control: “the process that occurs when the collaboration
tool limits, and sometimes even directs, user activity. It involves the following
capabilities: user activity limited by permissions, document checkout, version
histories, and workflow control. Libraries: “shared directories that shared documents are placed
into.” Document directories can be set up to require users to check out
documents before they can be modified. “Collaboration tools that provide
version controls have the data to readily provide histories on behalf of the users.”
Workflow control: “manage
activities in a predefined process.”
Q2-7: How Can You Use Collaboration Tools to Manage
Tasks?
Keeping a current task list is key to team progress. When
teams create and manage task lists, they reduce the risk of non-action. Sharing
a Task List on Google Drive: It is simple. Every team member needs a
Google account, then one member can create a team folder and share it with the
others with permission to edit all documents inside. Then a member would create
a spreadsheet on that folder. Sharing
a Task List Using Microsoft SharePoint: “SharePoint includes a built-in
content type for managing task lists that provides robust and powerful
features.” The standard task list: readily modifiable for user-customized
columns.
Q2-8: Which Collaboration IS is Right for Your Team?
Three Sets of Collaboration Tools: The Minimal Collaboration
tool set: you will be able to collaborate with your team, but with little help
from the software. “You will need to manage the concurrent access by setting up
procedures and agreements to ensure that one user’s work doesn’t conflict with
another’s. The Good Collaboration tool set: is a more sophisticated set of collaboration
tools such as the ability to conduct multiparty audio and video virtual
meetings. There is also “concurrent access to documents, spreadsheet, and
presentation files. The Comprehensive Collaboration tool set: This is the best
of the three sets. It has content management and control, workflow control, and
online meetings with sharing. Choosing the Set for Your Team: Power Curve: “a graph
that shows the relationships of the power as a function of the time using that
product.” Over time, the project will become complex and the problems of
controlling concurrent access will cause power to decrease. Don’t Forget Procedures and People: You
don’t have to worry about hardware with Good or Comprehensive sets. Your team
needs to have agreement on tools usage and what will happen when a members don’t
use them.
Q2-9: 2026?
“Free data communications and data storage will make
collaboration systems cheaper and easier to use.” Employees who isn’t required
to provide services in person will work from home, while nearly all corporate
training will be done online.
Three things that I learned
1)
Cost is something to think about when
choosing a Collaboration tool set, but it’s not everything since all team
member would have to be willing to contribute to the payment of said set. I
never thought about the cost of collaboration tool sets. I never used them
until I started college, but even then I used Google Drive, which is
essentially free. Google Drive is categorized as a Good Collaboration tool
since it includes forms of communication, content sharing, task management, and
nice-to-have features. It’s free and easy to use, but it has a limited value to
future business professional and other limitations such as tools not being integrated
so you have to learn to use several products.
2)
I have realized that when doing group
projects, most groups follow the same pattern or stages, with some changes here
and there. The first stage is the Starting Phase where team members share some
personal information and get to know each other. The team is usually pretty decisive
when it comes to deciding on a leader and other initial roles, rules, and responsibilities.
The project scope is also touched upon lightly. The next stage is the Planning
Phase. This is where we determine what
the tasks will be then dish out the tasks and dependencies out to the members. We
will also devise a schedule as to when we’ll meet up or when to have certain
task done by. The third step is the Doing Phase, where the work is in progress.
We begin doing our tasks and solving problems with deadlines or group meeting
times by rescheduling. We will also keep tabs and check in on each other for a
status update or any inquiries. Finally, the Finalizing Phase, where we
determine that the project is complete. We turn in our documents, present our
data and results, then we disband the team.
3)
When participating in group projects,
professors usually have us evaluate our team members and give critical
feedback. I think a lot of students dislike this process, but it is quite
helpful if one is receiving constructive criticism. Here are some helpful guidelines
to improve your feedback giving skill. You should be specific; for example, if you
do not understand then state exactly what you do not understand about it. You
should offer suggestions, but avoid personal comments. Always question your
emotions, especially if you feel upset or angry with another’s comment or work.
It’s better to understand why you are feeling a certain way than lashing out.
Do not dominate the project. It’s not your project, it’s your team’s project.
Finally, you should demonstrate a commitment to the group. If you say that you’re
going to get a task done or going to meet the group at a certain time, then do
it.
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