Collaboration engineering
Collaboration Engineering (CE) is an interdisciplinary research area from business informatics , computer science , sociology , psychology and economics and serves to develop high-quality, repeatable collaboration processes that are geared towards a group goal.
Definition / characterization
Collaboration engineering is a systematic approach to designing repeatable collaboration processes that can be used to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the joint efforts and expenditures of people in organizations . According to Kolfschoten et al. Collaboration Engineering defines itself as an approach to the development and implementation of high-quality and repeatable collaboration processes that can be carried out by end users (so-called practitioners) without the support of a professional facilitator , and is geared towards the fulfillment of high-quality, recurring tasks.
Task of collaboration engineering
A task is considered to be of high value if the organization concerned can derive significant value from the execution of these tasks or in this way prevent significant losses. The fact that Collaboration Engineering focuses high-quality work steps is due to the fact that the profit resulting from the successful execution of these high-value tasks greatly exceeds the success and profit of low-value tasks; The organization is thus given a benefit that justifies the efforts of collaboration engineering. A task, on the other hand, is regarded as repeatable if it has been repeated several times and with the same process sequence or can be executed again. Collaboration engineering aims at repetitive tasks, as there are often only scarce resources (e.g. planning effort, working hours of the participants, etc.) available for recurring work processes. The more often a task therefore z. B. occurs in a company, the sooner an organization can benefit from the use of collaboration engineering: The one-time effort for the design of the collaboration process is offset by repeated increases in efficiency and effectiveness.
Roles in collaboration engineering
Facilitator
Planning the collaboration, developing tasks, organizing and leading groups, examining the possibilities of deployable technology, promoting motivation and interaction: these and other tasks are essential for the collaboration process and are essential components of so-called facilitation : Facilitation is dynamic Collaboration support process that can be taken over by both internal employees and external consultants and that manages the relationships between people, tasks and technology as well as structuring tasks and contributing to the effective fulfillment of the meeting results. The process of facilitation in this context includes both the preparation and the implementation and follow-up of the collaboration by an outsider.
Collaboration Engineer
The collaboration engineer develops and documents a collaborative process that can be easily and successfully communicated to a practitioner. In contrast to the facilitator, who accompanies groups in the implementation of collaborative processes, the collaboration engineer has to design a process that can be carried out by practitioners themselves with repeatable success and predictable results.
Practitioner
The collaboration process design developed by the collaboration engineer is transferred to the end users in the organization, the so-called practitioners . A practitioner is a task specialist, e.g. B. an employee in a product development project who has to perform some important collaborative tasks with regard to his technical area of responsibility. The practitioner's work requires a high quality, repeatable and communicable process scheme that can produce predictable results and is made available to him by the collaboration engineer.
Collaboration engineering process
The procedure in collaboration engineering can be divided into six phases: First, the collaboration engineer and the organization decide whether collaboration engineering is an appropriate approach to tackling the task at hand (investment decision). If a positive investment decision is made, this is followed by an analysis of the problem area and the task, the development (the design) of the collaboration process, its transition into the organization, application by practitioners (implementation) and finally the ongoing use of the collaboration process design in the organization ( continuous use).
Collaboration process design approach
The collaboration process design approach represents a development scheme for collaboration processes. It describes a procedural model for problem analysis, for the design and for the transition of collaboration processes. The approach does not imply a linear sequence of design activities. The individual steps build on each other in stages and are iterative. The decisions that are made in the individual steps can accordingly influence the previous and subsequent selection options.
- Step 1: Task Diagnosis
- Step 2: Task Decomposition
- Step 3: Selecting the thinkLets (Task-thinkLet choice)
- Step 4: Agenda development (agenda building)
- Step 5: Validation
See also
literature
- Briggs, RO, Kolfschoten, GL, de Vreede, G.-J., Albrecht, C., Dean, DR, Lukosch, S., A Six Layer Model of Collaboration for Designers of Collaboration Systems. in: JF Nunamaker Jr., RO Briggs & NC Romano Jr. (Eds.), Advances in Collaboration Systems, Armonk, NY 2009, pp. 1-14.
- de Vreede, G.-J. & Briggs, RO, Collaboration Engineering: Designing Repeatable Processes for High-Value Collaborative Tasks, in: Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2005.
- Leimeister, JM, Collaboration Engineering - systematically developing and implementing IT-supported collaboration processes. Springer, 2014, ISBN 978-3-642-20891-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Kolfschoten, GL, Briggs, RO, de Vreede, G.-J., Jacobs, PHM, Appelman, JH: A conceptual foundation of the thinkLet concept for Collaboration Engineering In: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol. 64 (7), 2006, pp. 611-621.
- ↑ a b c Kolfschoten, GL, Briggs, RO, de Vreede, G.-J: Definitions in collaboration engineering In: Symposium on Case and Field Studies of Collaboration (HICSS39) 2006, pp. 16-23.
- ↑ a b Bostrom, RP, Anson, R. & Clawson, UK: Group facilitation and group support systems In: Group Support Systems New Perspectives New York, 1993, pp. 146-168.
- ↑ Briggs RO, de Vreede G.-J., Nunamaker JF: Collaboration Engineering with ThinkLets to Pursue Sustained Success with Group Support Systems In: Journal of Management Information Systems Vol. 19 (4), 2003, pp. 31-64.
- ↑ a b Kolfschoten, GL, de Vreede, G.-J .: A Design Approach for Collaboration Processes: A Multimethod Design Science Study in Collaboration Engineering In: Journal of Management Information Systems Vol. 26 (1), 2009, p. 225 -256.