1. Collaboration Environment
Individually, we are a drop. Together we are an ocean.

2. Introduction
This report is targeted at decision makers within the company.
The content of the report provides feedback and suggestion on the way
information is used within the company. It uncovers some of the needs of
employees and identifies areas for improvement within the current project
process.
The objective
The main objective of this report is to investigate and determine the impact of
implementing a flexible, company collaboration solution with a scalable
infrastructure, tightly integrated with existing business applications.
In addition, as a direct result of the implementation of a collaboration
environment, a by-product will be, streamlined communication providing a
transparent overview, for the extended organization.
The central focus of this report is centered on:
 Increased work-force productivity
 Faster time-to-market for products
 Shorten project timelines
How to achieve these objectives

.

3. The need for change
The current situation
To come into line with the Organization Strategy, (as highlighted in march
2007), moving away from a Product oriented to a Process oriented organization;
transparent information sharing is the key.
Businesses today need to drive productivity, and increase communication among
employees, partners, and customers.
To do this, a solution is needed that can serve as the foundation for all
knowledge sharing, tying together unstructured and process-specific knowledge,
in an environment where people can truly collaborate across the breadth of the
extended organization.
To summarize the most important questions:
Want do we want and need?
•Increased work-force productivity
•Faster time-to-market for products
•Shorter project timelines
•Less complex IT environment
• Road map for future efficiencies.
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4. Introspection
• Ask your self the question, what the impact will be if a key employee would
leave the company?
• How do we pick up the peaces and move forward without that knowledge?
• How much money can the company save by improving and streamlining the
day-to-day activity of a project?
• How can we bring new employees up to speed with the company products?
• Is it possible to lessen the impact from a time perspective on developers
assigned as mentors to new employees.
• How can we retain and share information, so all out side the individual project teams
can benefit.
• How can we maximize the effectiveness of weekly project meetings?
• Can we improve the speed of internal and external communication.
• How can we stop micromanagement by key individuals that are better suited to
more pressing tasks?
• Provide developers with effective updated information quickly, without
extensive browsing to find information.
• Can we empower project teams to produce better results?
• Can we provide our Project managers with a clear structured approach to help
them manage there responsibility effectively?
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5. Introspection
A large portion of knowledge is unstructured, residing in e-mail, on desktops, in
other documents and on Web pages.
Maximizing the value of unstructured knowledge is essential to realizing the
potential of project collaboration; capturing day-today interactions and utilizing
their value across the company is the missing link.
At this moment, information sharing takes place by chats within small project
teams or informal chats over a cup of coffee or at weekly project meetings.
This is an effective method of communication with a number of important
psychological team building aspects, however the question is can we combine
and enhance the way a project team performs? How can we link-up
communication with the rest of the organization?
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6. Internal Research
“We have done ok over the last few years so why the need for change?”
The main comment that supports this mind set is, “project teams all work
together, so there is no real need for collaboration/km tools, they all sit in the
same room.”
This may well be true to some extent and their is a lot to say for direct face-to-
face interaction. However as the project develops, and the company moves
towards a Process oriented structure a transparent collaboration environment will
improve communication and help speed up development times.
Once implemented the collaboration environment will add value across the
extended departments within the new company structure.
All the conversations I have had with individuals about these issues agree that
internal communication can improve in terms of efficiency and collaboration.
Picture an image of different individuals working together more effectively; what
would be the benefit of effective real time information sharing?
New members of the Organization
I have spoken to a number of new employees about how they find information.
Their response was:
quot;I have wasted time trying to find documents in the product directory, to no
avail, when I have asked employees that have been with the company for years
where to find that information, they too have problems finding the information.
quot;I have felt stupid on a number of occasions, and distinctly got the impression
that I upset my colleague, because I had to ask him again where the information
was located.quot;
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7. Internal Research
Established members of the Organization
Experienced developers have told me that they have problems finding
documents and presentations, in addition their is no central location that
provides a clear overview of important details relevant to the project.
Given these and other comments it is clear that a better solution is needed other
that a directory tree structure.
If we where to perform a time and motion study , I would make an educated
guess and suggest that most of us throughout the life of a project lose anything
from one to two days trying to find information.
“The fact is 80% of intellectual assets leave the building every day
retained in the minds of employees.
This issue has the potential to influence the bottom line of a project in a number
of different ways.
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8. The solution and improvements
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
As the company expands, the importance of effective real time information
sharing will increase ten fold (more products, more employees)!
From Product to Process oriented
The good news is, we can retain this knowledge, and harness all the information
in a single web based digital environment.
This will enable all employees to streamline the knowledge sharing process,
understand, and collaborate effectively on projects, thus improving productivity
and time to market ect...
The proposal is to implement a solution with a scalable infrastructure, tightly
integrated with existing business applications, a true collaboration solution that
transparently and securely ties people on the outside, to the resources on the
inside.
A collaboration solution that improves sharing and teaming across all process;
and supports customer satisfaction by capturing best practices, and company
knowledge, but leveraging that knowledge to accelerate responses to customer
requests, proposals, resolutions and new ideas internally.
Improve team productivity
High performing teams are a key to better business results.
• Project managers will have the ability to create and control collaborative
workspaces. Make it easy for teams to adapt workspaces to the needs of the
project.
• Manage projects more efficiently with a project task list template. Visualize task
relationships and project status with automated Gantt charts.
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9. • Coordinate teamwork with shared calendars, alerts, and notifications.
• Communicate with team members using instant messaging.
• Make it easy to include and work with team members from outside the project
group.
Manage content and streamline processes.
Comprehensively manage and control unstructured documents, Web pages,
(PDF) files, and e-mail messages
Find and share information more simply.
Find information and expertise wherever they are located. Share knowledge and
simplify working with others within and across organizational boundaries.
Author, review, and publish documents
Improvements in key document-centric processes produce better content in less
time.
• Use document workspaces to streamline the document creation process
• Enable disconnected participation with offline support
• Manage the document life cycle with integrated Enterprise Content
Management (ECM) capabilities.
Streamline people-driven business processes
• Deploy standard site templates to improve people driven processes like User
interaction issue tracking.
• Drive out process variation with workflow
• Create collaborative applications using integrated application development
capabilities.
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10. The solution and improvements
Create, capture, and share company knowledge
Sharing best practices in expert groups drives awareness and adoption of
business process innovation.
• Broadcast information with blogs and Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
• Capture company knowledge with wikis
• Encourage dialogue with surveys and discussions.
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11. Conclusion
The suggestion is to set-up and use a collaboration environment for a Project
based upon the Process oriented organization directory structure.
Collectively we can all assess the improvements the collaboration environment
offers, from PMs to developers to Top-level management.
I am confident that once implemented it will improve the productivity of a
project, and provide a transparent overview of all projects across the
organization.
Thank you for taking the time to read this proposal.
Colin Latham
Technical writer
Collaboration Environment
11/11
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