Groupware
is the programs or formats that make Virtual Teams,
and businesses work in today's
technological world.
Traditional GSS--Group Support Systems tools (e.g.,
brainstorming, ranking, and so on) are well suited to help solve these kinds of problems,
but most are optimized and packaged for same time, same place group member use. To be
truly useful for a virtual team, the GSS tools must be better suited for distributed group
member use. The tools must be easy to use when team members are remote, almost to the
point of being "facilitator-less," and they must be easily accessible by team
members at any time and from any place. In fact, most times the members of the virtual
team will not use the GSS tools from their office but from remote, ever changing
locations, most likely via a notebook PC and a modem. Traditional GSS tools for
distributed use come close, but are not ideal for use by a virtual team. In addition,
dial-up charges back to a central GSS server can be expensive.
In addition to traditional GSS tools for distributed use,
there are a number of other tools which could be used for virtual teams but also miss the
mark. Telephones and pagers are not useful for true team collaboration and, although voice
mail is possible, require synchronous communication to be effective. E-mail allows
asynchronous communication, but is awkward for team collaboration and does not allow the
structure of GSS problem solving tools. Desktop video conferencing tools, such as Intel Proshare,
are rich media, but they are relatively expensive, require special hardware and
communication lines that may not be available in the field, and limit the user to
synchronous communication. Groupware applications like Lotus Notes enable team collaboration, but they
do not provide the structure of GSS problem solving tools and require remote team members
to dial-in to a central server, which can be expensive.
One potentially powerful alternative for virtual teams is
to use the Internet World Wide Web for team member collaboration. The Web is easy to
design and build for, easy to use, and readily and inexpensively accessible, even for a
remote team member with notebook PC and modem. One interesting prototype for GSS-type team
member collaboration via the Web is TCBWorks:
Webware for Teams, provided by Alan Dennis and his colleagues at the University of
Georgia. They have built prototype GSS tools, such as brainstorming, which run on the Web
and are accessible to anyone with a Web browser such as Netscape.
There are other models for Web-based collaboration.
Another useful model is EIES
II, provided by the New Jersey Institute of Technology's Computerized Conferencing and
Communication Center. This new system builds on their earlier work (i.e., the original
EIES) in computer-mediated communication systems. Another example is The Sports Server, Nando Sports Chat , which
enables net-enabled sports fanatics to converse with each other on-line (this service was
accessed nearly 6 million times during the previous week!). To see the full range of
possibilities for Web-based collaboration, check out Worlds Chat, a fully
interactive, graphical, Internet-based, virtual chat space which rivals Doom, the popular
PC/LAN-based interactive game. World's Chat must first be downloaded and installed on your
PC. Lotus has also recently introduced InterNotes, Internet extensions for Notes, but
Web-based Notes applications still lack the structured problem solving tools that GSS
offer. Notes helps people to share documents and participate in discussion data bases, but
these are relatively static applications which do little to help people with tasks beyond
basic communication and information sharing.
As these sample applications show, Web-based
collaboration tools are certainly doable. Further, with the new HTML editors and other Web
software available, Web-based collaboration tools are getting easier and easier to build.
There are a variety of good Web server software packages now available, many of which are
shareware. Good HTML editors, such as HotMeTal and HotJava, enable you to make use of
forms, which can be used as input screens for team member comments and other
contributions. Common gateway interface (CGI) scripts can be written to manipulate the
forms and the information they elicit and send this information to a data base such as
Access or Oracle. Your Web server can now be a PC, not much different than the one you are
probably using on your desktop right now. For more information on constructing Web servers
and applications check out "Running a perfect Web site," by QUE Corporation,
1995, or check out the recent special issue of PC Magazine on Web products, October 10,
1995.
The explosion in Web-based products and possibilities
means that it just got easier to bring together quickly and easily the right mixes of
people to solve problems. Web-based collaboration tools offer a lot for these virtual
teams. It is up to us to push the edge of the GSS envelope and explore the Web as a
vehicle for enabling virtual team members with fast, easy access to each other, to problem
solving tools, and to useful information. |