In this week’s Collaboration for Grown Ups post on Computerworld.com, it’s all about user adoption. After all, what’s the use in investing in a system that isn’t being used. In a recent post, we discussed top-down drivers that are imperative to ensuring adoption, such as user buy-in and training.  In this post, we focus on a key bottom-up driver:  What does it take to captivate that early adopter user base, which will then be what enthusiastically drives others to come on board? The answer is simple: User Interface.

A dynamic user interface’s ease of use, simplicity, workflow support and many other important points to consider are addressed in “The Collaboration System User Interface: 10 Questions You Need to Ask.” I detail what you should be asking yourself about the collaboration system you use or are about to deploy, so that the solution aligns with your organization’s needs.  Enjoy and let me know your thoughts in the comments!

@leighjasper

In this week’s Collaboration for Grown Ups post on Computerworld.com, we take a look at how adoption of a collaboration system within and between organizations depends on a very crucial initial stage: Buy-in.  It’s about getting users to not only understand, but also accept that the benefits of the new system and process will outweigh any effort on their part to learn a new approach or change their habits. Change is sometimes scary, we know. Since everyone has different points of view on using collaboration, you’re probably already aware that it’s going to require multiple approaches to convey its benefits to a diverse team.  But are your approaches scalable, easily accessible and available?

Check out “Getting Collaboration Up and Running” and see why I think it’s essential to prioritize a well-executed roll out, no matter what organization it is.   As always, I welcome the comments and feedback for discussion – it’s all about collaboration, right?

@leighjasper

Aconex spends a lot of time listening to what our current and future customers want, so when I read ENR’s recent tech tools reader survey (subscription required), I was happy to see that we’re headed in the right direction.  Not surprising, the greatest tech desire of ENR readers is “true interoperability of all their software and systems.” And of these software and systems, BIM came out on top.

As I’ve mentioned before, interoperability becomes increasingly critical as firms invest in BIM. Imagine you’re a contractor on a large-scale, multi-party project that is using BIM models and your deployed software is incompatible with the rest of the teams.  You’re left out in the cold – data standards differ and precious time is ticking away.

Hosted, neutral platforms like Aconex make your life with BIM that much easier, so you don’t have to worry about different processes, versions and software. With that said, I agree with one of ENR’s anonymous respondents – “There is so much that can and still must be learned [about] using BIM. I would say that BIM is such a powerful tool that its full potential may not be realized for many more years.”

Stay connected for some exciting BIM developments from Aconex. I have a feeling you’ll like what you see.

In my last post on Collaboration for Grown Ups, I’ve focused on technologies that are commonly mislabeled as collaboration.  Continuing with the theme this week, I cover enterprise solutions and why the very nature of them prohibits you from collaborating across your entire supply chain.  The goal of collaboration is to keep all parties equal, with an opportunity to gain.  This is where enterprise systems fail, because the overriding focus of enterprise IT creates multiple barriers and “lock down” strategies, all harming successful project delivery.

To read the full post on Computerworld, visit “You want to collaborate? Forget an enterprise solution,” and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Leigh

@leighjasper

Collaboration for Grown ups: FTP is not collaboration and it never will be

In my last few posts on Collaboration for Grown Ups, I touched on a variety of different points that play into collaboration best practices, tools and technologies. For this week’s post, I’m focusing on one very specific technology that is commonly mislabeled as collaboration: File Transfer Protocol or FTP.

Given the basic collaboration principals lacking, I have to insist that FTP is not true collaboration. Yet, even with the technology advancements and stronger definitions of what it means to collaborate, many companies still admit to using FTP as their bread and butter collaboration solution.

Check out the post on Computerworld, “FTP is not collaboration and never will be”, where I’ll address where FTP fails as a collaboration tool. Let me know what you think: are you ahead of the curve or did you get caught in the act?

Leigh

I’d like to congratulate Aconex customer Graham Construction on being featured in an ENR article on January 31.  “Private Funding Finds A Way Into Other Public Spaces” focuses on how public-private partnerships (P3) can save on long-term life-cycle costs.  We’re proud of the work we’re doing with them on the US$426 million expansion of the Kelowna and Vernon Hospitals, which is British Columbia’s largest P3 project to date.  Along with the cost and efficiency savings of using Aconex, ENR notes that the P3 approach is set to save the expansion about US$25 million, which is quite the accomplishment.

Read more about the two projects and how Aconex gives Graham “the visibility and accountability required” on a P3 in our website’s case studies section:

Kelowna General Hospital – Accountability, visibility on PPP project

Vernon Jubilee Hospital – Accountability on PPP project

In this week’s Collaboration for Grown Ups post, I’m diving into the second and final post of the collaboration tool considerations series. We’ve already discussed the technology considerations, so now it’s time to dial into what will ultimately drive adoption: users. Ensuring a quality user experience with the collaboration tool results in a higher adoption rate and also maximizes ROI.

Check out the full post “Top 10 considerations for collaboration tools: Part Two, users,” live on Computerworld.  Hopefully this collection has been useful to you.  Have anything else to add?  Let me know in the comments section.

Leigh

@leighjasper

For some just starting to explore collaboration and its benefits, the task of choosing a solution for an organization can be daunting. In this week’s Collaboration for Grown Ups post, I’m featuring part 1 of a 2-part series to help guide organizations through some key technology considerations to ensure a system meets expectations.

From deployment to search & analytics capabilities, I hope you enjoy the read. Next week, I’ll switch gears to finish out the Top 10 focusing on what the users need.

You can view “Top 10 considerations for collaboration tools: Part One” at its original location in the Computerworld blogs. Looking forward to your feedback – be sure to leave a comment to keep the discussion going.

Collaboration for Grown Ups is well underway and I’m kicking off 2012 with what I promised: the second part of my collaboration trend predictions for the coming year. Part one addressed trends like Big Data and social networking. For part two, I switched gears a little bit into cloud deployment and how it relates to mobile and the enterprise.

Enjoy Collaboration trends for 2012: part two! Please share on your social networks and link back if you have your own blog.

Now that 2012 is full steam ahead, I can gear up my next round of posts. Stay tuned for topics like collaboration vs. FTP and what to look for in a collaboration solution.

Back in 2009, Simon Bristow presented to the Agile Australia conference on how Aconex had incorporated “Inter-Sprint Breaks” into the Agile process to avoid burning out teams with the pressures of back-to-back sprint delivery. Included in the set of activities that Aconex undertakes in these breaks were Hackathons (one day to work on a project of your choosing that does not have to be related to Aconex and present back to the business what you learnt) and Howhardi Gras (one week to answer “How long would it take to…” question for a selected set of Aconex related projects). Both of these activities were primarily about Innovation and have been very successful except in one thing; very few of the projects were then prioritised by Product to be delivered to clients. Many of the projects demonstrated great potential, but few made it to the top of the queue for development and release.

In the last week before the 2011 Christmas break Aconex undertook a different activity; a “FedEx week” that focused more on delivery. The project criteria still required innovation, challenge and business value but they also had to be completed and delivered, ready for our next external release or immediately available for internal use. The term FedEx Day has been popularised by Atlassian who now offer to help other companies run their own FedEx days.

Engineering drove the project selection process after receiving over 160 suggestions from the broader business. The engineers were then able to pick their projects and form their own teams, giving them the opportunity to work with different people. We ensured that each project had the right skill mix to be successful, so there was some minor shuffling of people and projects before the week began, but most people worked on their first choice.

All seven projects that were selected were delivered at the end of the week, despite numerous technical challenges that were encountered along the way. One project was deployed immediately to production for some beta clients to try, three others will appear in our next major release of Aconex and the other three are available for internal staff to use. Overall it was a very successful and productive exercise, especially as it is usually a quiet week in the office before the Australian summer break.

We did observe some changes in behaviour, with many meetings cancelled and less collaboration between the teams since they were focused on their goal and not the overall goal for all the teams. The user experience team also had to rush the designs of some functionality, there was no time for any user testing and compromises were made due to the strict deadline. Therefore, this is not a sustainable approach to software development.

Hackathon’s and Howhardi Gras still have their place and we will continue to run them but Agile emphasises that business value has not been delivered until clients are using and paying for new functionality. Therefore, the occasional FedEx week is a good way of achieving innovation, challenging and motivating engineers, and delivering business value.