Is a process that occurs when the collaboration tool limits and sometimes even directs user activity?

Using MIS, 10e (Kroenke)

Chapter 2 Collaboration Information Systems

1) Collaboration is defined as a group of people ________.

A) coming together to perform tasks that are different

B) working together to achieve a common goal

C) performing independent tasks that are important

D) working without having to critically analyze each other's work

E) reconciling differences in communication styles

2) ________ is defined as a group of people working together to achieve a common goal via a

process of feedback and iteration.

A) Participation

B) Collaboration

C) Association

D) Cooperation

E) Assimilation

3) Which of the following is a key difference between collaboration and cooperation?

A) Unlike cooperation, collaboration occurs when a job has to be accomplished.

B) Cooperation requires people to have a common goal, whereas collaboration occurs even

without a common goal.

C) People should work together to cooperate, whereas they need not work together to

collaborate.

D) Unlike cooperation, collaboration emphasizes iteration and feedback.

E) Cooperation emphasizes iteration and feedback, and collaboration emphasizes consensus.

4) A student team, which is assigned a term project, works together to achieve results. They

provide continuous feedback to each other and thus, complete the project. Which of the

following is being illustrated in this activity?

A) collaboration

B) association

C) participation

D) cooperation

E) support

5) ________ is defined as a group of people working together, all doing essentially the same type

of work, to accomplish a job.

A) Collaboration

B) Association

C) Participation

D) Cooperation

E) Support

6) A student group that is working on a project is considered to be a collaboration if the

________.

A) members work on different sections by themselves

1

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

Chapter 2

Summary: Collaboration has a major role in business, especially among team members. It is important to give effective critical feedback to teammates and team leaders. One must be well informed before making any decisions. Collaboration tools can be used to improve team communication, to manage shared content and to manage tasks.

Topics and details

Q2-1: What Are Two Key Characteristics of Collaboration?

Cooperation: “a group of people working together, all doing essentially the same type of work, to accomplish a job.” Collaboration: “a group of people working together to achieve a common goal via a process of feedback and iteration.” Two Key Characteristics of Collaboration are feedback and iterations. Importance of Effective Critical Feedback: teammates learn from each other through collaboration. It’s difficult to learn if there are no different ideas expressed.Guidelines of Giving and Receiving Critical feedback: The most important collaboration skill is giving and receiving critical feedback. Students should set feedback guidelines when they first meet.Warning: Many people do not understand the importance of collaboration and prefer to do the work alone, but should remember that everyone has different backgrounds and experiences.                         

Q2-2: What are Three Criteria for Successful Collaboration?

Hackman’s three criteria for successful team collaboration are successful outcome, growth in team capability, and meaningful and satisfying experience.                                                            

Successful Outcome: The team needs to accomplish their goal whether making a decision, solving a problem, and creating a work product within the time limit and budget.Growth in Team Capacity: Teams often last months to years in business. Over time, the team becomes more efficient, develops better work processes and inter-group communication.Meaningful and Satisfying Experience: If a task is perceived as important to the group, then it will become meaningful.

Q2-3: What are the Four Primary Purposes of Collaboration?

The four primary purposes of collaboration are becoming informed, making decisions, solving problems, and managing projects.                                                                                                 Becoming Informed: “The goal of the informing is to ensure, as much as possible, that team members are conceiving information in the same way.”                                                                   Making Decisions: Operational decisions: “are those that support operational, day-to-day activities.” Managerial decisions: “are decisions about the allocation and utilization of resources.” Strategic decisions: “are those that support broad-scope, organizational issues.” Structured decision: “there is an understood and accepted method for making a decision. Unstructured decision: “there is no agreed-on decision-making method.” Decision processes and their decision types are loosely related. Collaboration is less needed in structured decisions, but is crucial in unstructured decisions. Solving Problems: Problem: “a perceived difference between what is and what ought to be.” The most important task for a problem-solving collaboration group is defining the problem. Managing Projects: There are four stages to managing projects: starting, planning, doing, and finalizing.

Q2-4: What are the Requirements for a Collaboration Information System?

Collaboration information system: “an information system that supports collaboration.”                      The Five Components of an IS of Collaboration: Project Data: “data that is part of the collaboration’s work product.” Project metadata: “data used to manage the project.”                     Primary Functions: Communication and Content Sharing- “there are numerous alternatives to constructing an IS” to meet the requirements of Hackman’s three criteria.

Q2-5: How Can You Use Collaboration Tools to Improve Team Communication?

Team communications are important to collaborative projects since there is a need to provide feedback. Synchronous communication: “when all team members meet at the same time” i.e. conference call or meeting. Asynchronous communication: “when teams do not meet at the same time” i.e. different time zones. Virtual meetings: communication technology where people do not meet up at the same place and possibly not the same time. Screen-sharing applications: “enables user to view the same whiteboard, application, or other display.” Webinar: “virtual meeting in which attendees view one of the attendees’ computer screens for a more formal and organized presentation.” Videoconferencing: using webcams on computers to have “face-to-face” without the physical attendance i.e. Google Hangouts, WebEx, and Skype for Business. Email: usually used by teams who need asynchronous meetings. Discussing forums: an alternative to emails. Team surveys: members create a list of questions and other members answer them.

Q2-6: How Can You Use Collaboration Tools to Manage Shared Content?

For sharing office documents, many use Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, or Apache OpenOffice. It is important to content share, enable iteration, and provide feedback. Team members need to share both project data, work-product data, and project metadata.                                                       Shared Content with No Control: “email is simple, easy, and readily available” but it is not good for collaboration. File Server: “simply a computer that stores files.” Servers are better than email because there is only one storage location, but if two people are making changes at the same time, one’s changes will be lost.Shared Content with Version Management on Google Drive: Version management: “track changes to documents and provide features and functions to accommodate concurrent work.” Google Drive: “a free service that provides a virtual drive in the cloud into which you can create folders and store files.Shared Content with Version Control: Version control: “the process that occurs when the collaboration tool limits, and sometimes even directs, user activity. It involves the following capabilities: user activity limited by permissions, document checkout, version histories, and workflow control. Libraries: “shared directories that shared documents are placed into.” Document directories can be set up to require users to check out documents before they can be modified. “Collaboration tools that provide version controls have the data to readily provide histories on behalf of the users.” Workflow control: “manage activities in a predefined process.”

Q2-7: How Can You Use Collaboration Tools to Manage Tasks?

Keeping a current task list is key to team progress. When teams create and manage task lists, they reduce the risk of non-action.Sharing a Task List on Google Drive: It is simple. Every team memberneeds a Google account, then one member can create a team folder and share it with the others with permission to edit all documents inside. Then a member would create a spreadsheet on that folder.Sharing a Task List Using Microsoft SharePoint: “SharePoint includes a built-in content type for managing task lists that provides robust and powerful features.” The standard task list: readily modifiable for user-customized columns.

Q2-8: Which Collaboration IS is Right for Your Team?

Three Sets of Collaboration Tools: The Minimal Collaboration tool set: you will be able to collaborate with your team, but with little help from the software. “You will need to manage the concurrent access by setting up procedures and agreements to ensure that one user’s work doesn’t conflict with another’s. The Good Collaboration tool set: is a more sophisticated set of collaboration tools such as the ability to conduct multiparty audio and video virtual meetings. There is also “concurrent access to documents, spreadsheet, and presentation files. The Comprehensive Collaboration tool set: This is the best of the three sets. It has content management and control, workflow control, and online meetings with sharing. Choosing the Set for Your Team: Power Curve: “a graph that shows the relationships of the power as a function of the time using that product.” Over time, the project will become complex and the problems of controlling concurrent access will cause power to decrease.Don’t Forget Procedures and People: You don’t have to worry about hardware with Good or Comprehensive sets. Your team needs to have agreement on tools usage and what will happen when a members don’t use them.

Q2-9: 2026?

“Free data communications and data storage will make collaboration systems cheaper and easier to use.” Employees who isn’t required to provide services in person will work from home, while nearly all corporate training will be done online.

Three things that I learned

1)      Cost is something to think about when choosing a Collaboration tool set, but it’s not everything since all team member would have to be willing to contribute to the payment of said set. I never thought about the cost of collaboration tool sets. I never used them until I started college, but even then I used Google Drive, which is essentially free. Google Drive is categorized as a Good Collaboration tool since it includes forms of communication, content sharing, task management, and nice-to-have features. It’s free and easy to use, but it has a limited value to future business professional and other limitations such as tools not being integrated so you have to learn to use several products.

2)      I have realized that when doing group projects, most groups follow the same pattern or stages, with some changes here and there. The first stage is the Starting Phase where team members share some personal information and get to know each other. The team is usually pretty decisive when it comes to deciding on a leader and other initial roles, rules, and responsibilities. The project scope is also touched upon lightly. The next stage is the Planning Phase.  This is where we determine what the tasks will be then dish out the tasks and dependencies out to the members. We will also devise a schedule as to when we’ll meet up or when to have certain task done by. The third step is the Doing Phase, where the work is in progress. We begin doing our tasks and solving problems with deadlines or group meeting times by rescheduling. We will also keep tabs and check in on each other for a status update or any inquiries. Finally, the Finalizing Phase, where we determine that the project is complete. We turn in our documents, present our data and results, then we disband the team.

3)      When participating in group projects, professors usually have us evaluate our team members and give critical feedback. I think a lot of students dislike this process, but it is quite helpful if one is receiving constructive criticism. Here are some helpful guidelines to improve your feedback giving skill. You should be specific; for example, if you do not understand then state exactly what you do not understand about it. You should offer suggestions, but avoid personal comments. Always question your emotions, especially if you feel upset or angry with another’s comment or work. It’s better to understand why you are feeling a certain way than lashing out. Do not dominate the project. It’s not your project, it’s your team’s project. Finally, you should demonstrate a commitment to the group. If you say that you’re going to get a task done or going to meet the group at a certain time, then do it.

What occurs when the collaboration tool limits and sometimes even directs user activity?

What type of decision requires the most collaboration?

Which type of communication occurs when team members do not meet at the same time?

Which of the following is considered the single most important skill for effective collaboration?