CIOs on Enterprise 2.0 …

Here’s a lengthy piece from Information Week on Enterprise 2.0, based on a study of 250 business technologists on the merits of going web 2.0 in the enterprise. It holds that business technology people are concerned about the security aspects of Enterprise 2.0 offerings.

Well, yes, compliance, due diligence, compatibility with IT governance and integration into existing infrastructure are valid concerns, and constant topic in my discussions with colleagues and fellow enterprise 2.0 folks.

But overall the article is not too negative about the prospects of enterprise 2.0, because it shows that the concept is gaining traction while being aware that these issues must be dealt with. So I have no doubt that more and more IT departments will start to facilitate the use of “2.0”-tools and concepts, if only because Enterprise 2.0 is essential for extended value net organizations:

It’s a new architecture defined by easier, faster, and contextual organization of and access to information, expertise, and business contacts – whether co-workers, partners, or customers. And all with a degree of personalization sprinkled in.

Yet,

[there’s] this tension between the IT department that wants to have this orderly, planned infrastructure, and you’ve got end users out there experimenting with all these different collaboration tools.

Susan Scrupski tracks some discussions in this field, i.e. the role of CIOs, of IT departments etc.

Equally interesting is Mike Gottas take on the article here.

Is SharePoint Scalable?

Mauro Cardarelli asks the right question, i.e. whether organizations are ready for collaboration software. He puts it like this:

I ask “Is SharePoint scalable [in this organization]?” That is, can this company set the proper governance policies and business process changes to maximize its SharePoint investment to take advantage

Well, on the one hand this is true, but do we always need to fiddle with business processes? Software should be freeform and adaptable to a variety of organizational settings, and social software in the enterprise starts with this premise. In fact I would argue that one huge advantage of e.g. wikis in the workplace is that they can adapt to a multitude of settings …

But his requirements (and best practices) for implementation projects are good:

It starts with building the right advisory team and setting the proper procedures (in writing) that define the guidelines for all users to maximize their experience as consumers AND contributors of corporate content. With that, SharePoint scales… throughout the organization… into your partner/client community… and out into the internet world.

No arguing with this, especially the right staffing of an advisory team (and perhaps also employing external specialist consultants like me, hint hint …) is important.

Does Best Practice exist?

Here comes the question that lies behind many discussions I’ve had in the last days (e.g. here) …

I have started to think about what is best practice in a complex system – can it exist? In complex systems every situation is unique. Whilst practitioners closest to the problem will find a way of solving it, does that mean that the solution to this problem can be adequately codified and be laid over a totally different situation and applied in another context? Chances are that in a small team setting you might get away with this and build models to assist in finding the best solution. But as the number of people involved, and the problems to be solved increase, you will quickly move into new territory with a different frame of reference and set of contexts – so would one “best practice” work?

Hardly, yet best practices are important, which can be used when situations, tasks and (underlying) patterns are similar. Of course best practices shouldn’t be carved in stone but be open to adaptation and tweaking – it’s a start when we don’t understand them as “products” but as processes.

In regard of Enterprise 2.0 for complex organizational systems this makes it clear, that one advantage of light-weight and freeform enterprise social software systems is that they can be constantly improved and refined, whereas (customized) packaged software can’t be tweaked and optimized this way. This follows open-source concepts such as “release early and often” or “fail fast” and puts them to use in enterprise software projects.

This calls for a small start, that is expanded constantly with new services, from which one can quickly learn from user feedback …

Marketing Enterprise 2.0

Thomas Otter offers some insight into SAPs experiences and implementation exercises with wikis (like at SDN). Yes, this is emergence in action, and yes it will probably fundamentally change how software is developed, supported and marketed.

But that he points out this post by Jeff Walker of Atlassian (“How to Ruin a Perfectly Fine Product with Marketing”) on the pros and cons of marketing is more important, because establishing these tools needs “marketing firepower” that Google and Microsoft can and will deliver:

[…] I do like both Microsoft and Google. Why? Because they are about to commoditize wikis for the masses and educate another 10 – 50 million people on wikis. In rather different ways. Wikis, which without doubt are one of the two killer apps to emerge from Web 2.0 Wonderland, along with blogs, will be spread and will benefit from the massive marketing budgets and reach of the Evil Empire and Do No Evil. (Jeff Walker)

Lotus Connections – Some Initial Thoughts

Luis Suarez promises to offer some insights and reflections into Lotus Connections, i.e. Dogear, Roller, Profiles etc.

Looking forward to it, Luis.

And yes, it’s interesting to see whether IBM will offer this as a packaged, integrated solution or if they will push this via the consulting guys? Technology issues are important, but the real groundwork must be done in implementation (and change management).

Lessons Learned from Social Software Implementations

Mike Stopforth collects some neat advice for social software implementation projects, but basically it is aimed at fellow social software consultants. His arguments are well put forth, nothing to argue here. I understand his critique of overly-IT-focussed consultant selling well – fortunately my boutique consultancy frogpond is in no way a IT consultancy, thus I feel no guilt.

1. Social Software is not for Everyone

Despite what us Web 2.0 enthusiasts may want to believe, not every society, community and individual can find value in 2.0-ness. Some companies do fine without it and forcing a social media inplementation on a community can only get ugly. Be as objective as you can when you draw up a strategic plan or functional specification for a project. If you’re not convinced that social software can add value, walk away from it.

2. Social Software is About People

And therefore is about culture. Certain corporate cultures find it easy to integrate social software, others kick up against it. This often has to do with change management, but sometimes i’ts impossible to force (or even encourage) change. Competitive internal environments where intellectual property is regarded a personal competitive differentiator can often be difficult to penetrate in this regard. It also depends heavily on the size of the community, […]