Collaboration - Operational definition

Collaboration is a concept and a form of synchronous and asynchronous engagement at multiple levels, ranging from countries and firms to people observed in all areas of work both large and small scale, since ancient times. The objectives of engaging in work to achieve a common goal and collective outcomes reveal characteristics of collaboration that include nature of ties, timeless and transferrable skills of people, processes and more recently, use of technologies, irrespective of the nature of work and context.

Conoley, J., & Conoley, C. (2010) discuss the promise and characteristics of collaboration for adult relationships for energetic and creative team work. The viewpoints are based on Fredrickson’s (2002) “Broaden-And-Build” theory on fueling positive emotions.

Fredrickson’s theory include the following essential characteristics of collaboration.

Focus on strengths to pursue goals.

Eliminate perceptions that deter progress and interfere with support.

Commit to promote positive or at least neutral frameworks with adaptive explanations.

Leaders commit to promote creative, cohesive teams, and enable continuous growth for win win/ bidirectional success.

In stressful situations, provide individuals with necessary resources and emotional support.

Ask for help when needed, be grateful for the help received.

Notice the needs of others.

Exploring the domains, contexts, and environments ranging from inside and outside firms and businesses to individuals helps understand the essential characteristics of collaboration. In the context of grand challenges human beings come together to collaborate for meeting life’s essentials by nature. Scientific research and technology development requires deeper focus of experts and specialists. The expertise is unique and special for a variety of systemic issues that arise during the research. Discuss, debate, integrate, and assimilate are some of the themes of collaboration that arise.

Here are some examples:

Context: Grand challenges
Theme: Collaborating from everywhere voluntarily for a higher purpose.
Japan earthquake, Psunami. Virtual teams (Netflix experiment with collective intelligence, diversity)

Context – Collaborative Research groups
Theme – highly focused individuals integrate and assimilate for systemic issues.

Context – Practitioner and academic administration partnership

Theme – establish a learning environment, impart education.  

Context – Software development

Key themes:
Open Source Development – Community of volunteers developing software source code.

Agile software development methodology - Extreme programming or pair programming

Collaboration in the context of software development – A few details.

Software development aka programming is not limited to writing code given specifications. For complex technology development (for example web based technology development, such as Amazon recommendation system) there are several creative areas and opportunities to explore for optimal decision making. The software under development needs to meet both functional and several quality of service level agreements to cater to. There is legacy code to transform and integrate with. The application code should function under several test conditions ranging from a unit level functionality, to multiple conditions such as scaling and performing reliably for a number of users. The software thus developed is unique for the system that it is intended to function.  

In practice, prototypes are generated by senior level engineers which undergo transformation on a continuous basis to meet the requirements. Several modules of functionality are taken up by individuals creatively working in small to large team environments. Code inspections and review process involve members of the teams who meet on a regular basis to discuss and debate on the validity of the code being written. Writing code is a result of the above thought process, which requires proficiency and skill in the language being used. It takes maturity, proficiency and experience to write code in the language as well as in the context for complex software.  

Decisions for progressing on which route to take while developing software is a crucial area that benefits with collaboration of competent individuals who understand the nuances of the requirements and tradeoffs to be made. Roles of a creative team require the cognitive abilities of a detective, explorer, artist, engineer, judge, producer, provoker, think tank, facilitator, and manager. Together, the creative team engages in the learning, organization and direction of the team, and creation of the product or process (Crawford, B., & de la Barra, C. (2008)).

Collaborative team work is emphasized in Extreme programming. The team engages in programming, testing, interacting with the customer as well as consultant, project management for tracking and monitoring the tangible and intangible products developed. There are more indirect roles that include senior management to sponsor the project work. The priorities and emphasis of each of the roles vary depending on the phases of the project life cycle which includes iteration and response to feedback.  

Extreme programming practices in the software development are said to improve the satisfaction and confidence levels of the paired programming members of the team. Evidence suggests that pairing people may not always result as the better of the best individual performances. It is noteworthy to consider the net positive effects and benefits that result in working with satisfaction and confidence with pairs performing in par with the individual best performers (Balijepally, V., Mahapatra, R., Nerur, S., & Price, K. H. (2009)).

Adapting to collaboration at workplace:

Assignment:

Come up with the context, themes for collaboration at your work place. For this, consider the following questions.

How is collaboration incorporated in the context of the work flow at present?

What are your suggestions to improve the nature of collaboration?

References:

Conoley, J., & Conoley, C. (2010). Why Does Collaboration Work? Linking Positive Psychology and Collaboration. Journal Of Educational & Psychological Consultation, 20(1), 75-82.

Balijepally, V., Mahapatra, R., Nerur, S., & Price, K. H. (2009). ARE TWO HEADS BETTER THAN ONE FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT? THE PRODUCTIVITY PARADOX OF PAIR PROGRAMMING. MIS Quarterly, 33(1), 91-118.

Crawford, B., & de la Barra, C. (2008). Does eXtreme Programming support Collaborative Creativity? International Multiconference Of Engineers & Computer Scientists 2008, 1026-1032

Fredrickson, B. L., & Joiner, T. (2002). Positive emotions trigger upward spirals

toward emotional well-being. Psychological Science, 13, 172–175.

External collaboration - concept for companies

External collaboration is getting more sophisticated leading and following the customer (s) with technologies. Technologies are in place at every touch point of the journey following him/ her as a part of the system of life experiences. The role of technologies in the journey reminds me of the famous quote, “you can lead a horse to the water, but cannot force it/ him to drink”. Ongoing, innovative, and experimental endeavors to fine tune the experience is expected to bring value, derive outcomes, with a higher impact to the interactions. The effort requires in depth understanding of the context, personal preferences, coming into play to provide a unique, unified, adaptive, proactive support system to the customer - pre and post sale. 

Consumers of the electronic commerce industry of the late ‘90s to the first decade of Y2K are experienced with the prominent B2B and B2C business models. The information age has emphasized migration of an array of back end and robust information systems to web based, global systems. 

The quest for utilizing the internet’s strength as a larger platform embedded by systems of platforms is taking shape in the form of consumer interaction platforms in the business world. In addition, very powerful business models are harnessed to address the new age global customer with experiences that are deeper in meaning, nurturing behaviors with every device that can augment human empathy. 

External collaboration - Open source development model

Several models of external collaboration have taken shape in the always changing, rapidly innovating software industry over the last few decades. Much can be learnt from this industry on the models of external collaboration that might be suitable for other scenarios as well. 

The open source community is strong and continues to challenge the proprietary initiatives in the software industry. Linux operating system, adopted worldwide at a large scale on computer systems is the starting of the dominant and most popular cases of the marvels and miracles achieved by open source community. In 1991, thousands of volunteer software developers collaborated with a student, Linus Torwalds who placed his software modules open for anyone willing to contribute and develop code under the GNU General public license. There is no stopping to this movement since then. The history of evolution of the open source community model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software_development) and several other team collaborations adopting various software development techniques are beyond the scope of this post. Today, at the Top Coder (topcoder.com), more than a million coders around the world come together for similar crowdsourcing initiatives. Google’s mobile phone operating system Android (based on Linux kernel) is yet another case of open source initiative by Google. 

The software and information systems industry have learnt much from systems thinking and analysis (feasibility study) and several design patterns from the systems engineering approaches of manufacturing and other engineering disciplines. 
Whether the case of following the example of open source community is relevant and feasible for external collaboration is a more challenging question. Companies can explore the feasibility by systematically analyzing of why crowdsourcing is useful and resolves their problem at hand, what they can crowdsource, and how they can approach the initiative.

External collaboration - deeper, meaningful, empathetic

Pink, Daniel. ( © 2006, Whole new mind) called this phenomenon attributing it to the dawn of “conceptual age”. He defines the conceptual age “animated by a different form of thinking” with aptitudes of “high concept” and “high touch”. He further clarifies that high concept “involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new. High touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning”. 
The current trends in producer consumer interaction platforms are fundamentally different from the business models witnessed in the various stages of internet evolution so far. They combine the strength of internet as a platform along with the applications of the conceptual age as defined by Pink, Daniel. (2006). The connected world of industries and individuals have taken the platforms to become hubs of communities where producers and consumers interact more than ever before jointly creating new business models. These consumer platforms operate with their foundations closer to social communities of customers whether they are public, industry specific, business created or those created by the customers themselves. These communities organized as platforms are setting the stage for new ways of designing interactive customer experiences in scenarios with behavioral complexity and relational control. 

College Students experience with team based collaboration

Conoley, J., & Conoley, C. (2010) discuss the promise and characteristics of collaboration for adult relationships for energetic and creative team work. The viewpoints are based on Fredrickson’s (2002) “Broaden-And-Build” theory on fueling positive emotions.

Fredrickson’s theory include the following essential characteristics of collaboration.

Focus on strengths to pursue goals.

Eliminate perceptions that deter progress and interfere with support.

Commit to promote positive or at least neutral frameworks with adaptive explanations.

Leaders commit to promote creative, cohesive teams, and enable continuous growth for win win/ bidirectional success.

In stressful situations, provide individuals with necessary resources and emotional support.

Ask for help when needed, be grateful for the help received.

Notice the needs of others.

College students experience of collaboration is based on the culture promoted in their college by the administration, faculty and students themselves. Students value collaboration as a vehicle for a smooth journey of college experience and higher education challenges. Students like to feel “at home” and “settled” as early as possible to get to the actual goals of education. At this stage, they would use the collaborative learning model to meet with their fellow classmates and faculty to understand the needs to perform well.

 

Students work on team projects which span for a few weeks of the course, sometimes spanning the whole course duration. The ties they form during team work varies. There are teams that would prefer to get together based on time zones as well as skills that complement and help succeed. Once, they are assigned to teams/ or form their own teams, they share their skill set, knowledge required for the course project, as well as the use of technologies to get to learn from each other.

Students also share their life and work experiences to form bonds that go beyond the classroom. Students understand their accountability to their teams to meet the demands of team work. They are aware of interdependencies both for skills as well as meeting their life demands and social connections.

References:

Conoley, J., & Conoley, C. (2010). Why Does Collaboration Work? Linking Positive Psychology and Collaboration. Journal Of Educational & Psychological Consultation, 20(1), 75-82.

Collaboration – Dealing with conflicts, courage to disagree

Teaching and facilitation for team work is generally on the conflicts that occur with the project work process and schedule.

An important area that is often missed by performing teams is to take the time to present conflicting scenarios to consider alternatives. Questioning assumptions, understanding constraints and documenting them to justify the decisions is part of any progressive project proposals. Students and facilitators require training to include this very important aspect of openness in decisions. The dialogue among teams needs to be free and focused on the subject matter.

While team conflicts and resolutions focus on the people and project level issues, the conflicts that arise for progress in the subject matter cannot be neglected.  In the case of peer reviews conducted for software development, this aspect comes into play to ensure software quality and adhere to service level agreements. Conflicting interests of stakeholders need to be managed in a collaborative manner to meet the requirements of the software application. With several customers and consumers for every software endeavor, both standardization and customization need balancing approaches to come to consensus.

Peer reviews or code inspections are considered a “best practice” conducted in a collaborative environment among the groups of developers and authors. They are conducted face to face as well as in asynchronous settings focusing on the software to be developed.  It requires preparation to be able to review a peer or team member’s work. Unfamiliarity about the team member’s work will not allow for a proper review and is an obstacle to progress. During properly practiced reviews, the author and reviewer roles become quite “blurred” as the process encourages exchange of views as well as taking on each other’s responsibilities towards better output for the product. Change management is a continuous process that is associated with the review process. The review requires expertise and only senior level, experienced members need to be involved in the process. It certainly encourages collaboration and discussion in very novel ways (Rigby, P., Cleary, B., Painchaud, F., Storey, M., & German, D. (2012)).

Reference:

Rigby, P., Cleary, B., Painchaud, F., Storey, M., & German, D. (2012). Contemporary Peer Review in Action: Lessons from Open Source Development. IEEE Software, 29(6), 56-61. doi:10.1109/MS.2012.24

http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree

Coaching for Learning Teams

Learning teams must be introduced to the various methods for teaming. For resource allocation, nature of work in projects as well as the diversity of people must be taken into account. Work may be process oriented or specialist oriented. Work may be innovative or competitive in spirit. People in the team may be from various cultures and locations on the globe. People may also  belong to different generations working toward a common goal in the projects they work on.

Consider a project to improve or upgrade the business HR system with outdated technologies. This is a project that can be accomplished by adopting established analytical thinking methods, information gathering techniques as well as proposal writing guidelines. Teams may consist of specialists from the business side and technologies side familiar with Human Resources functions systems. A project manager or leader who understands the process to get the product functionality right is the added asset for a team. The project can progress with structured methodologies in spite of being a unique project for the specific business.

The Netflix competition of 2008 to improve the movie recommendations system to customers is a very different project  launched by the business. The project is characterized by several new approaches to meet the objectives. It is a crowd sourced, predictive analytics based, global contest project in action. Following the course of actions of the company and the teams to face the grand challenge is a lesson in teaming. The basic requirement for teams working on this project was to think effortlessly outside the box with no prior knowledge of the subject matter.  The teams demonstrated competition and cooperation to collaborate depending on the need of the hour. People from various nations united and managed to merge and blend among themselves to achieve this common goal at different stages of the project. There was meta learning to ensemble models to achieve the goal and win the prize. The approaches are not limited to a predictive analytics competition, several mergers and acquisitions that happen in the business world have valuable lessons to offer in teaming.

Connecting with a diverse group of people including different generations at the work place virtually or face to face is a challenge. Resolving conflicts to lead and being led is not easy. With high achieving and performing teams, there is an added challenge of the paradox of self versus the team's achievement. Shifting perspectives from the truths that worked before will require changes as the teams transition thru stages of their own lives as well as those of others.  Several insights and perceptions on how people think about others and themselves need to be cleared by education and learning.

Training effective teams to prepare for higher education settings as well as the workplace need to consider the multi dimensional factors that come into play for teaming. Teaming can be an effective tool by itself to handle life and work challenges, assimilating best practices in a short term when several people with varied interests come together to get work done.

Transitioning as a routine

Transitioning has become a routine for all levels of professionals in the global business world. Add to this the flavor of eastern work philosophy with the western business structure [Reference 2]. This may be the recipe for chaos at the work place.

Leaders and followers tend to forget that both sides are transitioning in their day to day operations [Reference 1].  It matters for everyone to have goals to achieve and schedules to adhere to. It is not astounding that leaders do have their own goals towards their success. In their ardent desire for quick success, they cause chaos to their followers with their view points and decisions. They tend to forget often that their success depends on the success of their followers in most situations. Change and chaos have become synonyms mostly because of this rapid success paradox in global professional services firms. This unhealthy trend needs to be addressed.

It is common for leaders  to set false schedules and priorities for their teams to achieve high performance on projects. The priorities set for their teams may not truly reflect their or their clients' priorities. When this approach is taken too often, regular work at the organization turns into a  struggle for performance. This could also result in burn-out of the team members. Leaders need to take quick measures to regain normal work routines and environment when teams work in graveyard shifts to oblige their leaders and clients.

I hear that some of the IS/IT professional services firms at Hyderabad are preparing to address such situations. One of the measures seems to be timely vacations instead of  the cash option for vacation especially towards the end of the year for the employees. This is a good change to start with to regain normalcy.

To avoid chaos, leaders must be deliberately empathetic towards their followers. Leaders must self reflect regularly as to what their leadership means to their followers. Otherwise, ugly consequences could result when job responsibilities and work ethics cross boundaries. In a global business world, the individual's work life can become quite complex with unforeseen changes due to people and their processes. It matters much to address such issues that arise at the workplace with care and attention to detail.

The eastern work philosophy, confusions about work ethics and job responsibilities require attention in global organizations - big and small. The adaptability and flexibility of  followers to become self organized professionals at the workplace is a more complex and bigger topic. They are separate discussion topics for another post. 

References:
1. Van Buren, M. E., & Safferstone, T. (2009). THE Quick Wins Paradox. Harvard Business Review, 87(1), 54-61.
2. Office Tigers, Documentary Review 
3. Is Something Wrong with the way we work?

Team Work

I believe that in addition to individual skills and traits of team members, organizational politics, culture as well as evaluation processes define team work.

Things fall apart while working in teams when leaders and seniors focus more on competing for recognition, lack adequate knowledge to work and lead in the given setting for long periods of time, lack trust and judgment about themselves and their teams. Junior members struggle with incompetent seniors and with peer evaluation when peers play to the tunes of organizational politics.

Organizations reflect people's culture and processes they follow to achieve results and keep track of progress. I use culture as a broad term to hint at the personality, behavior and etiquette followed by professionals including behind closed doors.

Most successes and failures of teams can be attributed to qualitative skills such as collaboration, trust and judgement among the members and their organization. These qualities are intangible assets for an organization and are hard to measure. Knowledge and experience of members of teams also fall in a similar category. These aspects are the most difficult to recognize, measure and understand at various stages of work by the IS professional teams.

A project leader/ manager who can relate to these aspects will be able to lead and join his/ her teams in enabling a smooth journey towards effectiveness, progress and achievement. This requires a willingness to learn new approaches to team work, practice proven techniques and tools in order to reduce the pains and perils of working in teams.

Several materials and tools can help build and retain effective and performing teams. All it requires is the urge to learn, improve and put oneself to work for work's sake and to give his/ her best to the teams.

Some references along these lines are given below.

References:

1. Title: How far is too far? Lessons for business from ultra-high-performing military teams
Author(s):James D. Eggensperger
Journal:Team Performance Management, Year:2004, Volume 10; Issue:3/4, Page:53-59

2. Title: Global virtual teams: what impacts their design and performance?
Author(s):Krishna Prasad, K.B. Akhilesh
Journal:Team Performance Management, Year:2002, Issue:5/6, Page:102-112

3. When Teams Work Best
6,000 Team Members and Leaders Tell What It Takes to Succeed
By: LaFasto, Frank; Larson, Carl. Business Book Review Library, 2002, Vol. 19 Issue 9, p1-8, 8p.

4. Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy—and Others Don't.
By: Gratton, Lynda. Business Book Review Library, 2007, Vol. 24 Issue 26, p1-13, 12p;

5. The Power of Minds at Work.
By: Albrecht, Karl. Business Book Review Library, 2002, Vol. 19 Issue 33, p1-9, 9p;

Communication among IS professionals

Information Systems organizations emphasise teams, processes and most of all open communication among professionals. There is a great deal of interest in this topic as evidenced by the number of discussions, articles, management recommendations and college classes we have come across where the importance of this topic is stressed.


What is the purpose of communication among teams?

In a knowledge based environment, everyone involved has some basic understanding of the issues. Communication is considered the simplest of all the skills acquired by a professional yet communication causes a lot of confusion and stress on some occasions in every professional's life.

Is not the primary purpose of communication to understand, co-ordinate and to collaborate on issues?

How many of us remember that the expected outcome of communication is relief - not additional reminders and pressure on some unrelated or trivial topic?

The platform of communication is based on respect for the individuals's views on the subject matter. Debates and discussions can happen only when the individual does not mistakenly view an issue being discussed as a personal hitback and feel trapped. Logic and analysis require healthy thinking. Teams can arrive at sound conclusions when they can rise above the trivials of professional life and look beyond themselves.

The rise of social networking tools certainly offers a promise. They ensure communication among IS professionals via technologies which they are most likely to adopt faster than any classroom based course/ teaching or preaching!

References:

1. http://www.inc.com/guides/growth/23032.html

2. April 21st, 2008
Forrester: Social networking will be biggest enterprise 2.0 priority by 2013; Smaller businesses reticent
Blog - http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8555

3. For a comprehensive list on the web,
http://www.khake.com/page66.html