Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Ch.2 Collaboration Information Systems

Q1: WHAT IS COLLABORATION??
Collaboration is the "combined" efforts of two or more people that come to a common understanding. Collaboration is successful when performed correctly and more efficient than having individuals working alone. Ex:Some groups believe that by dividing up the work and coming together is useful; however, yes it might save time and the hassle of figuring out eachothers schedules, but you don't get a collaborative effort of ideas and meaningful feedback from the group. A collaborative effort involves communication, content management and workflow control. It is very important for a group to communicate and critique eachothers work in order to improve not only as individuals, but also for the group.Content management is key in making sure no information is duplicated from another team member and also to illustrate what changes have been made. Workflow control allows members to deal with specific tasks which helps run things more smoothly.
Q2: WHAT ARE THE COMPONENTS OF A COLLABORATION INFORMATION SYSTEM?
There are two kinds of hardware; client hardware is the means you have to communication, primarily phones. Server hardware is your computer and what is installed in it like google docs and spreadsheets. The software is google docs and spreadsheets that only require internet explorer or firefox. Data is what you store from documents, to team data, etc. in word, excel, powerpoint, etc.
PROCEDURES: Starting Phase--Setting the ground rules for a team. Who will be the leader, what roles each member has, and what goals will be for the team
Planning Phase--Designating who will do what and when should it be done by. Having alternatives as well.
Doing--This is when tasks are being completed. Review what has been done and provide changes now if necessary.
Wrapping up--Being able to determine if you are done or not and if so, then document your results for future reference.
Iteration and Feedback--Providing revised answers, answering questions
People is the most important aspect of a collaborative effort. It is what attitude, qualities and skills of different team members that can make or break a group.
Q3: HOW CAN YOU USE COLLABORATION SYSTEMS TO IMPROVE TEAM COMMUNICATION??
Encouraging others to criticize your work and vice versa, if you review someone else's work, provide them with quality criticism and helping them improve.
Synchronous Communication may be hard to do because all team members need to meet at the same time with either face to face communication or through conference calls.
Asynchronous communication is when team members meet at different times due to work conflicts or different time zones. Virtual meetings can be used if your team members can not meet up so webchat will be good as well as conference calls.
Q4: HOW CAN YOU USE COLLABORATION SYSTEMS TO MANAGE CONTENT?
Sharing content with your group such as documents, illustrations, spreadsheets and other data. There are two different controls of sharing content which are:
SHARED CONTENT WITH NO CONTROL. The way most groups share information is via email attachments but can be risky if not everyone receives it or notices the attachment. The best way is to have a group shared file server which is like a disk in a local computer. It is best because, everyone in the group can go to that shared folder to look for the work.
SHARED CONTENT WITH VERSION MANAGEMENT. This is the best way for groups to share eachothers work because it is in one folder and with a version management, it can track changes made. An example would be wiki where users provide their input and make changes as well.
SHARED CONTENT WITH VERSION CONTROL. This limits actions that is taken by a particular user and do not give control over the changes to documents to particular users. Each member is given an account with certain permissions, shared documents are put into shared directories or libraries.
Q5: HOW CAN YOU USE COLLABORATION SYSTEMS TO CONTROL WORKFLOW?
Sequential Workflow occurs in a sequence
Parallel Workflow is where reviews occur concurrently
Q6: HOW DO BUSINESSES USE COLLABORATION SYSTEMS??
Problem Solving, there are different views, everyone needs to agree on a common definition or answer.
Project Management is similar to ordinary team projects because they have a starting, planning, doing, and wrapping-up phase.
Decision Making. Operational Decisions deal with day to day activities. i.e: How much produce to order from a vendor, approving a loan, what payments to pay off.
Managerial Decisions deal with how much a budget should be, how many employees needed for hire, feedback and iteration can be taken into account.
Strategic Decisions involve considering a new product, opening up another branch or buying another company. Almost always collaborative.
Structured decisions are recognized and accepted
Unstructured decisions are not agreed upon. Predictions on the stock market is a good example.
Q7: 2020
This is stating that face to face meetings will not be so common due to the growing technological advancements. Most conversations are said to be asynchronous and even corporate training! Conventions will be virtual and it seems as if people will need to learn many online skills in order to keep up with the corporate business world.

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