Collaborative workflow

Workflow is a set of activities (service requests, tasks) and the rules that govern their behavior as they move from one service provider to the next until a project is completed.

Collaboration objects include web-based meetings, instant messaging, knowledge management wikis, documents (ECM), and shared calendars.

The goal of collaborative workflow is to provide synergetic efficiency gains to its constituents (social communication and service management) by:

• Improving effectiveness on joint tasks by removing the communication barriers between team members
• Minimizing organizational boundaries and information silos
• Allowing online social interaction to be goal oriented, structured, and measured

Ideally, collaborative workflow is a collection of parallel and sequential tasks that rely on communication and coordination to achieve a desired outcome.

Prior to the 1980s all IT operations were performed at the data center. Often perceived as faceless and monolithic, the data center was a corporate division housing fields of mainframe computers humming softly in locked rooms with raised floors. Workers regarded this insulated, air-conditioned computer room as an unresponsive ivory tower ruled by corporate information gatekeepers.

The introduction of the IBM PC in the early 1980s sparked a renaissance in computing.[1] The personal computer ushered in a power shift from the data center to the knowledge workers (the people who used the data to provide services throughout the company). This radical change led to the democratization of computing, but in the short run led to a period of chaos.

The democratization of computing resources and the empowerment of knowledge workers was an exciting development, and little notice was initially paid to the havoc it was causing in the workplace. The new model lacked standards, was fraught with trial and error, and required an ever growing level of support. This support came not only from the computer department, but increasingly from fellow team members. Peer support, although not explicitly shown in financial statements, led to an alarming drop in worker productivity.

By the early 1990s, studies published by respected consulting groups stated that organizations were spending a shocking amount of money on peer and informal technical support – about three times the amount that was spent on hardware (when a typical IBM PC cost about $5000). Many managers felt that the PC revolution had gotten out of control.

It was against this backdrop, and especially when companies started implementing local area networks, that the modern help desk was born. The corporate data center had disappeared and the resulting power vacuum needed to be filled. Many corporations resolved their data management issues by standardizing and automating processes.

In the United Kingdom, the Office of Government Commerce created ITIL. ITIL promoted standard practices in the deployment and management of IT resources.

The early help desks of the 1980s incorporated simple workflow models: problems were reported, dispatched, routed to a technician, resolved, and then closed. As decentralized computing matured, customized workflow solutions such as change management, configuration management, and problem management, enabled the IT department to focus on its primary objectives – resolving problems, and rolling out new applications faster, more reliably, and with greater ease.[2]

Workflow applications brought to the modern enterprise what Henry Ford's assembly line brought to manufacturing: improved efficiency, uniform outcomes, and greater throughput.[3]

As with all new technologies, social software went through a lengthy gestation period. Even before the widespread adoption of the Internet, social software was maturing and gaining a foothold with outfits like CompuServe and America Online. Before long, people were contributing to interest groups, using email and bulletin boards, and hanging out in chat rooms.

The latest generation of decision makers has embraced the social communication and collaboration media that grew from popular developments such as interest groups and Wikipedia. For this reason, enterprises have recognized the collaborative value of social software, and have begun using it within their existing IT structures.

The phases of implementing collaborative workflows include:

• Planning and setup
• Project/task instantiation
• Execution

• Design a model of the organizational hierarchy
• Assign members to skill teams (possibly across organizational boundaries)
• Use role-based access control (RBAC) to define who can access which part of the system, and in what capacity
• Develop skill-based queue folders to facilitate the forwarding of work so that appropriate team members can access it and perform the required tasks
• Use multi-task project templates, such as employee onboarding procedures, to facilitate quick instantiation of standard processes, while avoiding reinvention of the wheel, and promoting uniform outcomes
• Apply business rules to regulate workflow by creating alerts, initiating automatic workflow changes, and issuing communications in response to predefined conditions

• Instantiate the project/task manually from a template, or automatically through a business rule
• Specify the required outcomes and set the priorities
• Based on the skills required, route the tasks to appropriate queue folders for processing

• Work on the task, while logging task activities
• Tag documents, add them to the task, check them out, and update as required
• Schedule task-related team meetings and appointments as needed, with content and outcomes forming part of the task documentation history

Team members communicate online with each other via social software, with the help of document management and shared calendaring facilities.