Collaborative workflow

Collaborative Workflow

Merriam-Webster has not yet defined the term “Collaborative Workflow” but defines “collaboration” as working jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor and “work” as a specific task, duty, function, or assignment often being a part or phase of some larger activity.

The goal of collaborative workflow is to incorporate a collection of parallel, sequential tasks that communicate and coordinate with seamless precision to achieve a desired outcome. Teams can address their challenges through working together, and by doing so can achieve improved results. The starting point however is to make a conscious — and collective — decision to go beyond compliance and cooperation.

There are two main ways that professionals collaborate within the workplace. The first is physical collaboration, consisting of building a work environment that is designed to unify people and processes together, via the design process such as open-cubicle design and virtual offices. The second way is through software, tying projects together through one consolidated view, incorporating chat and email social tools, role-based access control and document management.

Origins of Collaborative Workflow

The introduction of the IBM PC in the early 1980s changed the way professionals collaborate. The first department that immediately needed a way to organize project traffic was Information Technology (IT).

This shift to using the PC within businesses required an increasing level of technical support. There were no standards and peers supporting peers led to increased costs and a drop in productivity. By the early 1990s, organizations were spending roughly three times the amount of money on peer and informal technical support as they were on hardware. Collaborative work was diminishing with the implementation of the PC and employees were looking for new ways to collaborate.

It was against this backdrop that the modern help desk was born. The United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce created the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) to promote standard practices in the deployment and management of IT resources.

The workflow of the early 1990’s was relatively simple. But as decentralized computing matured, customized-workflow solutions’ such as change management, configuration management and problem management were developed. Departments were increasingly able to resolve problems and roll out new applications faster, reliably and with greater ease.

Today, mature collaborative workflow software incorporates business rules to automate workflow and issue alerts to warn of impending failures and breaches in levels of service.

Collaborative Space

The look and feel of a professional work environment sets the tone for the workplace. When building a collaborative work environment, one should consider what type of attitudes are being encouraged and fostered. Creating a thoughtful, collaborative, exciting and innovative work environment often is less expensive than traditional but less creative approaches.

An open workspace layout has several powerful advantages; most importantly collaboration is easy between team members.

Collaborative Software

Collaborative software allows team members to oversee an entire project through the use of both traditional methods (project design, reports, dashboards, etc.) as well as collaboration tools (web-based chat, instant messaging, document management, alerts and shared calendars). With role-based access control (RBAC) support, ad-hoc teams that span traditional departmental structures can collaborate on projects while retaining enterprise security.

The Rise of Social Software

Today, an entire generation has grown up embracing social software tools such as chat, blogs, bulletin boards and wikis. As this generation worked its way into the corporate boardrooms, organizations began to recognize the inherent value of online interactions and are implementing social software within their corporate infrastructure infrastructure.

The ability to collaborate and share information and communicate across organizational boundaries had the potential to improve the dynamics of entire organizations.

Cross Collaboration

Collaboration is becoming more essential as budgets shrink, meaning objectives and projects must be completed in a timely, succinct manner. With collaborative workflow, all parties who have been granted access—cross-department or internally—have the ability to collaborate and manage projects through document sharing, email or instant messaging.

Collaborative workflow solutions can include:

• A goal-oriented project/task framework
• A secure infrastructure with RBAC that enables team members to collaborate while retaining confidentiality
• Social tools that enable linking of collaboration (structured document management including content indexing); communication (online chat, instant messages and alerts) and email and calendar synchronization (calendaring tools)
• Mobility enabling access from any mobile browser without requiring installation of an application

The integration of collaboration and communication tools with workflow software enables increased service efficiency by reducing information silos and the conventional business friction points of time, space and organizational structure. A collaborative workflow solution provides the flexibility and informality of social software with the results-oriented demands of business.

Measuring Collaboration

Goals, commitments, timelines and performance measurements must exist in order to measure the effectiveness of collaboration.

Measuring collaborative workflow productivity requires setting up metrics and measuring efficiency before the change as well as measuring the results following the change.

A recent study executed by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), along with research partners Intelligent Solutions, Inc. and BI Research, has found that IT administrators and end users are using or plan to use collaborative business intelligence for "making better decisions, "improving communication and information sharing and enhancing business knowledge."