Four foundations view of organisational collaboration
It's a great opportunity to extend this and show how the tool we are building (lets give it a working title of "Project PleX" for now) behaves in the same scenario.To enable foundation 1, "Project PleX" sits inside the firewall and monitors content and keywords. It sees that Julian consistently talks about Widget 15 and related topics, once a level of expertise is demonstrated, "Project PleX" will send Julian an e-mail asking him to confirm his expertise. This overcomes a core problem with profiling systems which are not automated - Julian is prompted based on the signals he's already sending, he doesn't have to step out of his busy day and suddenly realise he's now an expert in "Widget 15". "Project X" ensures that Julian's knowledge is kept up to date as he is demonstrating it. With "Project PleX" we believe in People Centric Software. We make a key distinction from Enterprise Search in that instead of searching for "Widget 15" and returning 15,000 documents that mention it, we return the people who talked about it which helps address "Foundation 2". This also overcomes a key problem with the sharing of e-mail. It's not hard to see that Julian would find it challenging to make his e-mail discoverable to everyone, after all sometimes he complains to his mates about the project manager on "Widget 15". "Project PleX" removes this worry, it's focussed on the fact Julian works on "Widget 15", not finding the e-mail he mentioned it in. Each skill identified by "Project PleX" can be explored, this includes seeing what content is being created that mentions the skill (to solve the e-mail problem, only certain sources would be shown). People interested in "Widget 15" can subscribe to this content as a feed to stay up to date. I don't think this is a full match for Foundation 3, but it does address some of the requirements. Finally, "Project PleX" will recommend to Julian people and skills which are related to his expertise. For example, if Frank in Sydney suddenly starts working on "Widget 15" as well, "Project PleX" will alert Julian so he knows to reach out from Melbourne to connect with Frank. "Project PleX" will also suggest other people and skills based on the skills that Julian already has. So for example, if Frank is an expert in "Fabrication Processes", then "Project PleX" would suggest this as a potential skill for Julian. I hope this combination of the theoretical and practical is whetting your appettite for learning more about "Project PleX", there is more to come, we are only beginning down the road, but it's great to see that there is a lot of interest in this area of knowledg signals in organisations already.Let's take an example. One of Julian's current projects is the design of a new widget, "Widget 15". Whenever he writes an email to colleagues about "Widget 15", that phrase is included. Whenever he posts to the project blog about the status of his work, "Widget 15" is mentioned directly in the text, or is implied because it's on the "Widget 15 Blog". He attends a lot of face-to-face and virtual meetings about "Widget 15", and these are scheduled using the calendar in the team's collaborative workspace.
Now looking at the four foundations, that means:
- When someone looks up Julian in the directory or profile system, they should see that "Widget 15" is something he's good at (foundation 1).
- When someone is looking into "Widget 15" -- via a search or on a tag cloud -- Julian should be flagged as a relevant person (foundation 2).
- People should have a way of opting in to receive updates about "Widget 15" (foundation 3).
- Julian is able to note an interest in "fabrication processes" related to widgets, and discover other people with similar interests (foundation 4).
