Chapter 2 Collaboration Information Systems This chapter discusses different ways we could use collaboration systems to help team

m members collaborate more effectively at anywhere and anytime. Collaboration happens when a group of individuals works together to achieve a common goal. Feedback and iteration play important roles in helping a team to produce a satisfying work product. The three critical drivers for effective collaboration are: Communication This involves the ability of team members to communicate with each other (such as giving and receiving critical feedback on their works) and the medium through which their communication is being conducted. Team members can communicate with one another synchronously (real time) or asynchronously (not real time). Team members are communicating synchronously when they have face-to-face meetings (real time and at one location). Even if the team members are locating in different areas, they could still have real time meetings via conference calls, webinars, multiparty text chat, videoconferencing, etc. If team members cannot meet at the same time, they can communicate asynchronously via email, discussion forums, and team surveys. Content management controls who has the permission to access, create, edit, and delete work content; it also track and report changes (who, what, when, why) that are made to the contents. There are three degree of control for shared content among the team members: no control, version management and version control. Examples of sharing content without any control is via email attachments or sharing files on a server. Version management systems such as Wikis, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Microsoft Office Groove give better control to the shared content than email attachments because they track changes that are made to the documents. However, they do not limit or have control over which users have the authority to create, alter or delete documents. With version management systems, each user is given a set of permissions of what they could do with the shared contents. The most popular version control application in todays market is Microsoft SharePoint. Workflow control specifying the ordering of tasks and responsibilities of each team member; it defines who, when, and how each task is to be accomplished. There are two types of workflows: sequential and parallel. Sequential workflow identifies the sequence of the activities to be taken placed. Parallel workflow allows two or more users to perform the same task at the same time. A collaboration information system has the following five components: hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. Collaboration procedures are present in all four project phases: starting phase, planning phase, doing and wrapping up. Collaboration systems are needed to facilitate problem solving, project management and decision making. There are three levels of decision making in organizations: Operational decisions involves decisions for day-to-day activities. These decisions are usually structured and does not require much collaboration. Managerial decisions concern how, when, where and how much each resource should be allocated in different area of the organization. Strategic decisions involve decision making of organization issues in a broader scope and they are usually unstructured.