Collaborative software (also referred to as groupware) is computer software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve goals. One of the earliest definitions of “collaborative software” is, "intentional group processes plus software to support them." (Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz [1]).
The design intent of collaborative software (groupware) is to transform the way documents and rich media is shared to enable more effective team collaboration. Collaboration, with respect to information technology, seems to have several definitions. Some are defensible but others are so broad they lose meaningful application. Understanding the differences in human interactions is necessary to ensure that appropriate technologies are employed to meet interaction needs.
Collaboration requires individuals working together in a coordinated fashion, towards a common goal. Accomplishing the goal is the primary purpose for bringing the team together. Collaborative software helps facilitate action-oriented teams working together over geographic distances by providing tools that aid communication, collaboration and the process of problem solving. Additionally, collaborative software may support project management functions, such as task assignments, time-managing deadlines, and shared calendars. The artifacts, the tangible evidence of the problem solving process, and the final outcome of the collaborative effort, require documentation and may involve archiving project plans, deadlines and deliverables.
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Collaborative software is a broad concept that greatly overlaps with Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Some authors argue they are equivalent. According to Carstensen and Schmidt (1999)[2] groupware is part of CSCW. The authors claim that CSCW, and thereby groupware addresses "how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems". Software products such as email, calendaring, text chat, wiki, and bookmarking belong to this category, whenever used for group work, whereas the more general term social software applies to systems used outside the workplace, for example, online dating services and social networks like Friendster, Twitter and Facebook. It has been suggested that Metcalfe's law — the more people who use something, the more valuable it becomes — applies to these types of software.
The use of collaborative software in the workspace creates a collaborative working environment (CWE). A collaborative working environment supports people in both their individual and cooperative work thus giving birth to a new class of professionals, e-professionals, who can work together irrespective of their geographical location.
Finally collaborative software relates to the notion of collaborative work systems which are conceived as any form of human organization that emerges any time that collaboration takes place, whether it is formal or informal, intentional or unintentional.[3] Whereas the groupware or collaborative software pertains to the technological elements of computer supported cooperative work, collaborative work systems become a useful analytical tool to understand the behavioral and organizational variables that are associated to the broader concept of CSCW.[4]
Doug Engelbart first envisioned collaborative computing in 1951 Doug Engelbart - Father of Groupware, documented his vision in 1962,[5] with working prototypes in full operational use by his research team by the mid 1960s,[6] and held the first public demonstration of his work in 1968 in what is now referred to as "The Mother of All Demos.".[7] The following year, Engelbart's lab was hooked into the ARPANET, the first computer network, enabling them to extend services to a broader userbase. See also Intelligence Amplification Section 4: Douglas Engelbart, ARPANET Section on ARPANET Deployed, and the Doug Engelbart Archive Collection.
Online collaborative gaming software began between early networked computer users. In 1975 by Will Crowther created Colossal Cave Adventure on a DEC PDP-10 computer. As internet connections grew, so did the numbers of users and multi-user games. In 1978 Roy Trubshaw, a student at Essex University in the UK, created the game MUD (Multi-User Dungeon). A number of other MUDs were created, but remained a computer science novelty until the late 1980s, when personal computers with dial-up modems began to be more common in homes, largely through the use of multi-line Bulletin Board Systems and online service providers.
Parallel to development of MUDs were applications for online chat, video sharing and voice over IP. These would be essential for further development. Studies at MITRE showed the value of voice and text chat, and sharing pictures for shared understanding.
The US Government began using truly collaborative applications in the early 1990s.[8] One of the first robust applications was the Navy's Common Operational Modeling, Planning and Simulation Strategy (COMPASS).[9] The COMPASS system allowed up to 6 users created point-to-point connections with one another; the collaborative session only remained while at least one user stayed active, and would have to be recreated if all six logged out. MITRE improved on that model by hosting the collaborative session on a server that each user logged into. Called the Collaborative Virtual Workstation (CVW), this allowed the session to be set up in a virtual file cabinet and virtual rooms, and left as a persistent session that could be joined later.[10] In 1996, Pavel Curtis, who had built MUDs at PARC, created PlaceWare, a server that simulated a one-to-many auditorium, with side chat between "seat-mates", and the ability to invite a limited number of audience members to speak. In 1997, engineers at GTE used the PlaceWare engine in a commercial version of MITRE's CVW, calling it InfoWorkSpace (IWS). In 1998, IWS was chosen as the military standard for the standardized Air Operations Center.[11] The IWS product was sold to General Dynamics and then later to Ezenia.[12]
Technology has long been used to bring people together. However, as distance increases, rules and protocols need to be implemented. One seminal book on the process of working together from a distance is 'Virtual Teams' by Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps.[13]
Collaborative software was originally designated as groupware and this term can be traced as far back as the late 1980s, when Richman and Slovak (1987)[14] wrote:
"Like an electronic sinew that binds teams together, the new groupware aims to place the computer squarely in the middle of communications among managers, technicians, and anyone else who interacts in groups, revolutionizing the way they work."
Even further back, in 1978 Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz coined the term groupware; their initial 1978 definition of groupware was, “intentional group processes plus software to support them.” Later in their article they went on to explain groupware as “computer-mediated culture... an embodiment of social organization in hyperspace." Groupware integrates co-evolving human and tool systems, yet is simply a single system. [1]
In the early 1990s the first groupware commercial products began delivering up to their promises, and big companies such as Boeing and IBM started using electronic meeting systems to leverage key internal projects. Lotus Notes appeared as a major example of that product category, allowing remote group collaboration when the Internet was still in its infancy. Kirkpatrick and Losee (1992)[15] wrote then:
"If GROUPWARE really makes a difference in productivity long term, the very definition of an office may change. You will be able to work efficiently as a member of a group wherever you have your computer. As computers become smaller and more powerful, that will mean anywhere."
As collaborative software evolves and migrates into the Internet itself, it contributes to the development of the so called Web 2.0 bringing a host of collaborative features that were originally conceived for within the corporate network. These include functionalities such as document sharing (including group editing), group calendar and instant messaging, web conferencing, among others.
The study of computer-supported collaboration includes the study of collaborative software and the social phenomena associated with it. There is a wealth of research produced about the impact of groupware in organizations and related social and psychological issues since the early eighties. Since 1984 the great majority of this work has been organized and communicated within the boundaries of a specialized scientific event - the Computer Supported Cooperative Work conferences - which are held by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction biannually. The next CSCW conference would be held in Seattle, Washington in 2012 and the program and the complete conference proceedings from the last conference in 2010 can be consulted here.
The complexity of groupware development is still an issue. One reason for this is the socio-technical dimension of groupware. Groupware designers do not only have to address technical issues (as in traditional software development) but also consider the social group processes that should be supported with the groupware application. Some examples for issues in groupware development are:
One approach for addressing these issues is the use of design patterns for groupware design.[19] The patterns identify recurring groupware design issues and discuss design choices in a way that all stakeholders can participate in the groupware development process.
Groupware can be divided into three categories depending on the level of collaboration:[20]
Electronic communication tools send messages, files, data, or documents between people and hence facilitate the sharing of information. Examples include:
Electronic conferencing tools facilitate the sharing of information, but in a more interactive way. Examples include:
Collaborative management tools facilitate and manage group activities. Examples include:
Gathering applications
This functionality may be included in some wikis and blogs, e.g. Wetpaint. Primarily includes:
Wikis
Either stand-alone (such as MediaWiki), part of a suite (such as TikiWiki) or web-based such as Wetpaint. A Wiki might include:
The design intent of collaborative software (groupware) is to transform the way documents and rich media are shared in order to enable more effective team collaboration.
Collaboration, with respect to information technology, seems to have several definitions. Some are defensible but others are so broad they lose any meaningful application. Understanding the differences in human interactions is necessary to ensure the appropriate technologies are employed to meet interaction needs.
There are three primary ways in which humans interact: conversations, transactions, and collaborations.[21]
Conversational interaction is an exchange of information between two or more participants where the primary purpose of the interaction is discovery or relationship building. There is no central entity around which the interaction revolves but is a free exchange of information with no defined constraints. Communication technology such as telephones, instant messaging, and e-mail are generally sufficient for conversational interactions.
Transactional interaction involves the exchange of transaction entities where a major function of the transaction entity is to alter the relationship between participants. The transaction entity is in a relatively stable form and constrains or defines the new relationship. One participant exchanges money for goods and becomes a customer. Transactional interactions are most effectively handled by transactional systems that manage state and commit records for persistent storage.
In collaborative interactions the main function of the participants' relationship is to alter a collaboration entity (i.e., the converse of transactional). The collaboration entity is in a relatively unstable form. Examples include the development of an idea, the creation of a design, the achievement of a shared goal. Therefore, real collaboration technologies deliver the functionality for many participants to augment a common deliverable. Record or document management, threaded discussions, audit history, and other mechanisms designed to capture the efforts of many into a managed content environment are typical of collaboration technologies.
Collaboration in Education- two or more co-equal individuals voluntarily bring their knowledge and experiences together by interacting toward a common goal in the best interest of students' needs for the betterment of their educational success.
Collaboration requires individuals working together in a coordinated fashion, towards a common goal. Accomplishing the goal is the primary purpose for bringing the team together. Collaborative software helps facilitate the action-oriented team working together over geographic distances by providing tools that help communication, collaboration and the process of problem solving by providing the team with a common means for communicating ideas and brainstorming. Additionally, collaborative software may support project management functions, such as task assignments, time-management with deadlines and shared calendars. The artifacts, the tangible evidence of the problem solving process, including the final outcome of the collaborative effort, typically require documentation and archiving of the process itself, and may involve archiving project plans, deadlines and deliverables.
Collaborative software should support the individuals that make up the team and the interactions between them during the group decision making process. Many of today's teams are composed of members from around the globe, with some members using their second or third language in communicating with the group. This situation provides cultural as well as linguistic challenges for any software that supports the collaborative effort. The software may also support team membership, roles and responsibilities. Additionally, collaborative support systems may offer the ability to support ancillary systems, such as budgets and physical resources.
Brainstorming is considered to be a tenet of collaboration, with the rapid exchange of ideas facilitating the group decision making process. Collaborative software provides areas that support multi-user editing, such as virtual whiteboards and chat or other forms of communication. Better solutions record the process and provide revision history. An emerging category of computer software, a collaboration platform is a unified electronic platform that supports synchronous and asynchronous communication through a variety of devices and channels.
An extension of groupware is collaborative media, software that allows several concurrent users to create and manage information in a website. Collaborative media models include wiki (Comparison of wiki software) and Slashdot models. Some sites with publicly accessible content based on collaborative software are: WikiWikiWeb, Wikipedia and Everything2. By method used we can divide them into:
Along with these, already traditional, methods recent expansion of corporate use of Second Life and other virtual worlds led to development of a newer generation of software that takes advantage of a 3D data presentation. Some of this software (3D Topicscape) works independently from virtual worlds and simply uses 3D to support user "in concept creation, planning, organization, development and actualization". Other [1] designed specifically to assist in collaboration when using virtual worlds as a business platform, while yet another type of software, Collaborative Knowledge Management (cKM), bridges the gap and can be used simultaneously in Second Life and on the web.
By area served we can divide collaborative software into:
Collaborative project management tools (CPMT) are very similar to collaborative management tools (CMT) except that CMT may only facilitate and manage a certain group activities for a part of a bigger project or task, while CPMT covers all detailed aspects of collaboration activities and management of the overall project and its related knowledge areas.
Another major difference is that CMT may include social software, Document Management System (DMS) and Unified Communication (UC) while CPMT mostly considers business or corporate related goals with some kind of social boundaries most commonly used for project management.
During the mid-1990s project management started to evolve into collaborative project management; this was when the process in which a project's inputs and outputs were carried out started to change with the evolution of the internet. Since the geographical boundaries broadened the development teams increasingly became more remote changing the dynamics of a project team thus changing the way a project was managed.
Former chairman of General Electric, Jack Welch, believed that you could not be successful if you went it alone in a global economy. Therefore Welch became a driving force behind not only collaboration between organizations, but also collaborative project management.
| Collaborative Project Management Tools | Collaborative Management Tools |
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CPMT facilitate and manage social or group project based activities. Examples include:
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In addition to most CPMT examples, CMT also includes:
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Different frameworks could be established based on a project needs and requirements in order to find the best software. But the best framework is the one in which the characteristics are so well defined that they cover all the aspects of collaboration activities and management of the overall project.
The challenge in determining which CPM software to use is having a good understanding of the requirements and tools needed for project development. There are many dynamics that make project management challenging (coordination, collaboration, sharing of knowledge and effectiveness of pm's to facilitate the process). Choosing the right CPM software is essential to complementing these issues. According to a survey conducted in 2008 to find out what project managers' expectations and uses of project management software are, the features most important to project managers with project management software were:
| Dimensions | Descriptions / Examples |
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| Resources Requirements |
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| System Requirements |
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| Support Requirements |
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| Collaboration Requirements |
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Some collaboration software allows users to vote, rate, and rank choices, often for the purpose of extracting the collective intelligence of the participants. The votes, ratings, and rankings can be used in various ways such as:
In the case of decision making, Condorcet voting can combine multiple perspectives in a way that reduces intransitivity. Additional uses of collaborative voting, such as voting to determine the sequence of sections in a Wikipedia article, remain unexplored. It's worth noting that no matter what voting method is implemented, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem guarantees that an ideal voting system can never be attained if there are three or more alternatives that are voted upon.
In addition to allowing participants to rank pre-existing choices, some collaboration software allows participants to add new choices to the list of choices being ranked.[22]
Voting in collaboration software is related to recommendation systems that generate appreciated recommendations based on ratings or rankings collected from many people.
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