Groupware: Experience in New Zealand Robert J. McQueen Department of Computer Science University of Waikato Hamilton, New Zealand
[email protected] ABSTRACT Groupware is a term used to describe a family of computer based applications which support group work, group communication and collaboration. This paper is a brief introduction to five groupware categories, and provides some examples of experiences in New Zealand. 1. Introduction to groupware The past decade has seen widespread adoption of microcomputer based personal productivity tools, such as the spreadsheet and word processor, by information workers in New Zealand organisations. However, many of those organisations have been recently undergoing significant restructuring, with flattened hierarchies, fewer middle managers, and more emphasis on teams being some of the more visible outcomes of these changes. Therefore, there is rising interest in tools that can help teams and groups become more effective and productive, within the context of reduced management supervision. The next decade may see a rapid growth in group productivity tools on microcomputers interconnected by LANs, as the capabilities of the computing infrastructure is able to support these kinds of activities. The existing group communication processes in organisations have already been replicated by a number of electronic equivalents. The brown inter-office mail envelope is being challenged by electronic mail and file distribution among desktop PC users. The much maligned business meeting faces alternatives such as computer conferencing and group decision rooms. Media spaces put on the desktop a facility that supports the communication equivalent of a casual walk down the hall or a meeting at the water cooler. Workflow applications provide electronic document co-ordination, address routing lists and forms processing. The pocket diary is being challenged by an electronic calendar kept on your computer, with time slots accessible and bookable by others. Work on these components of groupware has been presented at a number of conferences. The first conference on Computer Supported Co-operative Work (CSCW) was held in 1986, and interest in the bi-annual conference has grown rapidly.1 Small conferences on computer conferencing were held in 1
Proceedings, CSCW 1988, 1990 and 1992. ACM Press.
Canada2, and group decision support systems featured in one stream of annual conferences in Hawaii3. However, the use of the word groupware to define a collection of these group work oriented systems has only become common since 1991, with special supplements to PC Week4, and the commercial product orientation of the Groupware '92 conference. [Coleman, 1992]. Groupware, while comprising many diverse functions, is still difficult to define, and perhaps even harder to justify. According to one view, "....groupware can't be justified in traditional ways. That's because, for the most part, groupware's benefits are in areas that generally go unmeasured by conventional techniques. How much time is wasted each year in American businesses by telephone tag? No one knows. Nor is there a line item for miscommunications or time wasted having the same discussion more than once ."[Opper 1992]
2. The components of groupware Groupware is a term which describes a diverse collection of applications which have some relevance to supporting group work and processes in organisations. Several of these components, electronic mail, calendaring, conferencing, workflow, and group decision support systems, are briefly described in the section which follows. 2.1 Electronic mail Electronic mail, or email, will be a familiar tool to most readers of this paper. It has many similarities with its postal metaphor, including asynchronous (different times) sending and receipt of messages which allows discretionary reading by the recipient, but delivers messages in minutes rather than days. Ease of use and cost are factors that may be claimed as advantages in some circumstances, while disadvantages would include being unable to reach all parties desired through one medium. In its early days, electronic mail was usually an application provided to users of large multi-port minis and mainframes, which effectively restricted the reachable population to other users of that one machine. Software gateways were developed to permit message exchange between users on different machines, such as IBM's PROFS to Vaxmail. The accessibility of the ARPA network, which grew rapidly in the US in the early 70's, led to the development of the simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), which today is widely used for the exchange of messages among machines of many different generic types. And finally, the CCITT X.400 set of standards included a message handling service (MHS) specification for message exchange, which has been adopted by a number of electronic mail developers. Proceedings, Computer Conferencing 1985, 1987 and 1990. University of Guelph, Canada. Proceedings HICSS, 1986 - 1993. ACM Press. 4 PC Week, Special Report on Groupware, October 14, 1991 and October 26, 1992. 2 3
The infrastructure which supports electronic mail applications has gradually changed from isolated, multi-port mainframe mail systems to datacom connected machines with message exchange facilities. Synet and GE are two commercial services that provide mail exchange facilities among New Zealand organisations. While the popularity of overseas commercial mainframe based electronic mail systems (MCI Mail) does not seem to have been parallelled in New Zealand, there has been recent rapid growth in cooperative networks of electronic mail users. Almost 200 New Zealand organisations, including universities, polytechs, crown research institutes, government departments and companies can now exchange electronic mail through various networks [McQueen, 1993]. Because this network is also linked to the Internet (a worldwide network of networks), New Zealanders in these organisations can exchange messages with many millions of international users. Dial-up organisational email gateways can be set up to attach to the Internet for under $1000 per year operating costs. Commercial organisations, such as Ernst & Young, Electricorp Marketing and Netway, have joined some of the crown research institutes and local government authorities in directly linking their electronic mail systems to one of the New Zealand networks. A second tier of public access, network connected bulletin board systems is emerging, such as Kappacrucius (Auckland), Actrix (Wellington) and Equinox (Christchurch), which may help individuals and small companies gain low cost access. Victoria University of Wellington has been particularly successful in assisting organisations to obtain either email and/or IP access to the Internet. For further information and contact people in your area, the network co-ordinator of your local university may be able to help. The most rapid growth in mail exchange facilities is likely to occur in local area networks of desktop machines, coupled with message exchange software running on network servers. LANs, and their interconnections to other LANs, will likely become the most common infrastructure supporting electronic mail exchange over the next few years. From the user functions view, mail systems may start to include rules pre-processors (for example Beyond Mail), so incoming messages can be forwarded, prioritized, or discarded before reading based on originating author or keywords. Other mail products (for example Wijit from Agility Systems) may tap into information streams, such as newswire feeds, and external databases, so that desired information can be tracked down by the mail agent, and delivered to the user as a mail message. Electronic mail may even disappear as a standalone application, as applications and operating systems become "mail enabled" and allow the dispatch of messages and data from within favourite application programs across applications and LANs. Two application programming interfaces (APIs) which aid cross platform message exchange are VIM (Vendor Independent Messaging), backed by Lotus, IBM, Borland, Apple and Novell, and MAPI (Messaging API), backed by Microsoft, DEC and AT&T. Both are slugging it out for dominance [Brennan, 1992]. The winner may well be CMC (Common Mail Calls) from the X.400 API Association (XAPIA), which hopes to become the compromise standard. New Zealand purchasers or developers
of electronic mail systems should ensure that message exchange capability is high on their list of requirements. 2.2 Calendaring Calendaring involves groups of people sharing information about their availability through an electronic diary. Participants agree to keep their personal diary current by entering appointments and commitments, so that others in their workgroup can request and/or reserve vacant slots for proposed meetings. Stated benefits include much easier scheduling of meetings, and making information known on planned activities available to people like receptionists. It has the greatest advantage for people whose jobs already involve hourly use of the networks that support the calendaring application, so that new diary commitments will likely be up to date. Critical mass and regular usage are important success factors for calendaring systems.... if all the people with whom you may wish to meet do not use the system, or the information they provide is not up to date, then more frustration than benefit may result. However, the add-on cost of providing a calendaring function to users of an existing LAN may be relatively small, with functionality being provided in products like Windows for Workgroups and Wordperfect Office. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has been a user of Wordperfect Office for about three years, with about 1500 users currently active. The calendaring features are used by about 75% of those users to manage personal schedules. MAF has a high ratio of PCs to desks, which makes getting the critical mass of users necessary for calendaring much easier. However, many managers, while using their PC to remind them of appointments, would delegate the entry of their schedule information to their secretaries.[Johnson, 1993] 2.3 Conferencing Conferencing is one of the groupware applications that has been around for the longest time (since the early 70s), but which has experienced mixed success. One metaphor for a conferencing system is a long hallway of doors, where there is a meeting (conference) in progress behind each door. In each meeting, there is an agenda of topics, to any of which comments can be added by any participant at any time. Each participant can read the text of messages contributed to date in the context of a particular conference/topic, and a reasonable structured and linked discussion can ensue. The metaphor is implemented through participants speaking by entering text messages through a terminal connected to a machine that manages the database of messages, and listening by reading the messages presented in conference and topic structures. Conferencing systems can be a very effective medium for group communication and information exchange, particularly where the number of contributors and listeners is large, and where they are separated by distance and time. Thus, a conferencing system can act as both a medium of asynchronous discussion, facilitating a flow of the latest information and opinion among group members, and as a reference archive containing the contextually organised collection of messages which were contributed to the discussion. This latter concept of an archive of semi-structured information has not been
exploited to its fullest in many systems. With appropriate skimming and searching tools and intelligent agents to monitor and scan many discussions, the valuable information in a conferencing system's archive could be more effectively used. The architecture and access methods of conferencing systems is changing. In the past, conferencing systems ran on single mainframes and permitted only text messages, and users of systems like Compuserve, EIES and BIX accessed by modem connection through the public telephone network. Current systems such as Lotus Notes and News have databases distributed across network servers which can handle graphic and video images (although text is still dominant), and are usually accessed through desktop LAN network connections. The wave of enthusiasm for conferencing systems experienced by many new users may often be quickly dampened by two common occurrences. If the volume of usage is high among other group members, and the number of interesting groups a participant can plug into make it worthwhile to sign on regularly, then the thrill of electronic group communication may soon be offset by the distaste of information overload as more and more time is required to read and contribute messages. In other words, the seeds of declining interest may be sown by its very success in attracting many contributions, of which all may not be particularly useful to every participant. On the other hand, a conferencing system based discussion that fails to attract a critical mass of either a majority of the target population, or the key people who should be involved, will very quickly deteriorate to unproductive exchanges among a minority of the players. In New Zealand, the CoSy conferencing system has been running at the University of Waikato for five years, but its usage is primarily among a small subset of academic staff and students. CoSy was developed as a single server architecture conferencing system at the University of Guelph in Canada in 1983, and about 150 sites around the world have purchased Unix and VMS versions of the software. The Internet based News conferencing system uses a distributed server architecture, with about 60 sites in New Zealand taking newsfeeds of up to 40 megabytes of messages per day if all newsgroups are subscribed. News has two thousand newsgroups (conferences) which are said to be selectively read by up to two million participants worldwide. The News software is free, but charges are made for delivery of the daily message updates (newsfeeds) by the connecting hosts. There are also about one hundred bulletin board systems (BBS) throughout New Zealand running one of perhaps a half-dozen types of BBS software, which provide discussion and email facilities along with software exchange. Finally, Lotus Notes is a new commercial product which will likely have a large future installed base in supporting conferencing activities, particularly in the commercial sector. At Waikato University, research work in the area of conferencing systems has been undertaken to investigate the effect of voice input messages on information exchange in asynchronous electronic meetings [McQueen, 1992], and future work will likely look at some of the ways to make conferencing an effective tool for various kinds of organisations and group communication tasks.
2.4 Workflow Workflow is the automation of office document processing steps, and provides the tools and language for design of work processes. A helpful metaphor is that of a supervisor, who transfers documents among in- and out-trays located on a line of desks. The supervisor keeps track of where each document is at each stage of its processing, and can determine when a document has become stalled at one desk. Both sequential and parallel routing of a variety of data objects is required, often with routing decisions being dynamically taken. Workflow software should be able to accommodate both structured (forms) and unstructured (memos) types of tasks. A structured task would be one in which the processing of a document or information is precisely defined by rules and policies, and would have suitable characteristics of robustness, control and security imposed by the process designer. Tracking, problem notification and performance reporting would be provided by the system's management layer. Unstructured tasks in ad-hoc workgroups may also benefit from workflow systems, but these cases would require less formality, and more flexibility and ease of modification by the users themselves. While workflow systems are seen to be more than just image management and procedure automation, interest is growing because the technology to support electronic documents (scanning, display, large cheap storage) is becoming available in inexpensive desktop PCs, interconnected by LANs. Workflow capabilities are being introduced as both full feature standalone development systems, as well as limited capability enhancements features for existing word processing and electronic mail systems. One broader view of workflow is that it is a means of defining an interaction between customer and performer of a business process, which includes the steps of proposal, agreement, performance and satisfaction [Medina-Moro, 1992]. Action Technologies has developed workflow development tools for this view that have been implemented within the Lotus Notes environment. Workflow features have been announced for the next release of Wordperfect Office, but as of this writing, the new version was not yet available in New Zealand. 2.5 Group Decision Support Systems Group decision support systems (GDSS) wear a multitude of names - decision rooms, electronic meeting systems and decision support centres. They are usually operated in a synchronous (same time), same location mode in a purpose-built room, consisting of 20 to 30 PC workstations, connected by a LAN, in either a tiered horseshoe or multiple row physical configuration. The GDSS software supports functions such as brainstorming, voting, ranking and classification. A facilitator driving the use of the GDSS and managing the interaction of the participants is an essential part of the equation. A typical day-long session in the decision room would usually be preceded by several week's preparation in the organisation, as background issue documents were prepared and circulated to participants, and the activities
required to reach the desired goals were agreed between the meeting sponsor and the facilitator. A carefully planned agenda of activities would be developed, and the tasks set up on the GDSS system. On the day, the first activity scheduled would usually be a familiarity brainstorming excercise, such as "how can we improve tourism in our city?" Participants would type in suggestions at their own workstation, but also be able to see the suggestions that are being simultaneously contributed by others. Most participants are likely to be reasonably computer literate and competent two finger typists, but some percentage (perhaps ten percent) may need a helper to type in their contributions. Once familiarity and comfort had been achieved, the agenda activities focussed on the meeting's goals would commence. Usually there would be alternation between keyboard based activities, where the participant would be primarily typing and reading from the screen, and verbal interaction (whole group or subgroups) where the participants would talk and listen to their colleagues. What do GDSS sessions achieve, and how are they better than an equivalent facilitated meeting using whiteboards and flip charts? The research literature has generally supported the proposition that use of a GDSS contributes to improved decision quality, and it is generally agreed that brainstorming outputs of a group are often enhanced. Participants indicate on post-use questionaires that efficiency and effectiveness are perceived as being increased when a GDSS is used [Sheffield & Gallupe 1992]. Decision rooms are in operation in New Zealand at Auckland University, Victoria University, and the University of Waikato. The software used is Ventana Corporation's GroupSystems (Auckland and Victoria) and Collaborative Technologies' VisionQuest at Waikato. Auckland University has had extensive experience, with 200 groups using their facility since it was set up several years ago. Outside groups are encouraged to make use of any of the three university decision rooms, and can inquire into the arrangements necessary by contacting the co-ordinator at those universities. In-house purpose-built decision rooms are unlikely to become common, although some products, like VisionQuest and Notes, are targeted at decision and meeting support through in-office workstations connected by LAN. 2.6 Other groupware tools Other approaches to groupware are being developed in research labs, and may eventually result in commercial products. Collaborative writing tools support the production of multi-authored documents. With some environments, the collaborative writing effort occurs synchronously (at the same time), with the multiple authors simultaneously viewing a version of the document on their respective screens, which is undergoing change instigated by each of the participants. The authors, however, may be located at different locations. In other situations, the collaborative writing takes place asynchronously, with multiple authors updating various versions of the document in parallel. For the latter, techniques to report differences in document versions, and highlight revisions that have been made are required. [Neuwirth et al., 1992]
Shared work spaces are systems that enable two or more collaborators to construct objects which can be shared in realtime over distance. One example is a shared "whiteboard", usually implemented on high resolution graphic screens, on which the common object (a drawing) is manipulated and modified by two or more participants, each with access to pointers and drawing tools. The participants may be in the same room, or at distant locations connected by telecommunications. For separated participants, a voice channel supports dialogue, and there may also be small video head and shoulders images of the participants. Shared media spaces are systems that use integrated video, audio and computers to allow individuals and groups to communicate with each other despite being distributed spatially and temporally [Mantei et al., 1992]. Typically, the views of one or more video cameras in each participant's office are displayed on a portion of a graphics screen in another person's office. Informal conversations can be initiated among two or more people which feature both the video image and the voice of the participants. Research on shared media systems is exploring the new social etiquette that will be required, such as the office "door" being open, ajar, or closed to others wishing to establish a dialogue. High bandwidth networks to support text, voice and video group communication has been the subject of some preliminary investigations at Industrial Research in Wellington. However, the requirement for powerful desktop workstations and network switches for these systems means that their installation outside the research lab is likely some time away. 3. New Zealand experience with Lotus Notes One groupware product that has attracted considerable interest in the past two years is Lotus Notes. Notes provides both a delivery infrastructure that combines a graphical user interface, a set of standard application modules that support email, conferencing, and workflow, and a development environment that allows organisations to create their own custom applications. Unlike its shrink wrapped 1-2-3 spreadsheet product which is sold off the shelf by computer stores, Lotus' marketing strategy in New Zealand is to sell the Lotus Notes product through value added remarketers (VARs), where assistance in application development is available. 3.1 Lotus Notes VAR perspectives IBM New Zealand's Vikki Bright is charged with developing groupware marketing plans for her company, and IBMNZ has recently entered into a reseller agreement with Lotus for the Notes product. She views one of the key factors for easy installation of groupware is having an existing LAN installation already running. Her research has shown that overseas, 15% of all LAN software sold was groupware. The overseas interest in downsizing mainframe applications to LAN based platforms is also apparent in New Zealand, with many of IBM's key accounts already having extensive local area networks in place. The generally smaller size of organisations in New
Zealand means that some may have already chosen to follow the LAN instead of mainframe route for key applications, which in turn provides a promising market for groupware products. Tony Whale, of Electronic Document Management in Wellington, a Notes VAR, says that Notes has all the knobs and features to allow extensive customisation, which is not possible with some other groupware products, but application development needs to be run by people, such as from the MIS department, who understand the perils and pitfalls of the systems development process. Desi Lorand of Computer Systems Implementation in Wellington is also a Notes VAR. They have seen much interest in Note's ability to pull together information from various databases and present it to a user. One example that is frequently suggested is using Notes to pull together information concerning a key client, such as marketing correspondence, invoices, backorder status, and service call reports, each of which may come from different databases on different servers. Notes comes with 50 prewritten applications, but CSI often assists in customising these applications, or creating new ones from scratch, for their clients. A typical Notes client would run around six applications, each of which might take 1 to 3 weeks to develop. One recent use of Notes they have developed is to aid in the formal control of business processes within a company, as required for ISO 9000 certification. Notes has also been used for selective imaging of key documents (ie daily news clippings) and making those images available to Notes users. 3.2 Lotus Notes user perspectives Allan Burton of the Avalon NFU Studios of TVNZ has just completed evaluation and trialing of Notes, and is proceeding with purchase of 40 more licenses. Notes will act as a common user interface to access a number of databases already in existence on Avalon's LANs. The databases are written on a variety of platforms (CBA/Dataflex, PS2000 Revelation, Facman/Btrieve & Netware), and Notes will become the display engine to provide timely data to senior managers, business managers and marketing staff. Avalon has just finished developing a marketing information system in Notes which gets data from different databases, and provides a multi user interface to the result. Burton feels one of the most powerful features for remote communuications is to replicate databases through the remote access capability, while maintaining database integrity. He also expects the brainstorming capabilities in Notes will be used to stage both synchronous and nonconcurrent location dispersed idea generation sessions. Price Waterhouse in the US was an early adopter of Lotus Notes. The first offices were implemented in 1987, and there are now about 20,000 participants worldwide using the product, with network connections through hubs in Tampa, Toronto, London and Sydney. PW's motto of "great knowledge, fully shared" is cited as an reason why Notes is seen as an important investment. Phil Parnell has been involved with the introduction of Notes at PW in New Zealand, and while he is generally enthusiastic about its capabilities and positive impact on the business, he cautions that Notes does have some downsides. He feels that while the user interface is good, it can sometimes be a little unfriendly. As well, one needs to be a bit careful about how databases are created so that costs can be controlled. Eventually,
about 550 PW people in New Zealand will be using Notes, and Parnell expects the costs, including licenses, servers, and workstation upgrades to support windows will be well into six figures by the time all are connected. Notes at PW in New Zealand supports several dozen discussion groups conferences where daily messages on specific topics can be left and read by group members. In particular, Notes and the rapid international electronic communication it supports have proved extremely useful in dealing with large multi-national audit clients. Other information has been organised to aid technical support and marketing support functions. Research databases have been set up, which provide filtering functions and automatic alerts on incoming information, such as news wire feeds. A note of caution has been raised by one overseas researcher that groupware tools should fit or be carefully adapted to organisation incentive schemes and cultures. Her case study was on a consulting organisation, where there was a strong emphasis on maximizing billable hours of partners and associates. The introduction of Notes to the branch office of the firm seemed to present a situation where significant non-billable hours were required to contribute and make use of the information available through the product, creating a dilemma.[Orlikowski, 1992] 4. Groupware potential in New Zealand Is groupware a potentially significant new direction in the use of information technology in New Zealand, or is it just a catch-all phrase for product promotion? For many New Zealand organisations, communication and co-ordination with overseas suppliers, customers, and affiliated divisions is very important. Telephone calls across multiple time zones, and the duration, disruption and expense of overseas travel make competing in the global marketplace challenging for those based in New Zealand. Some of the groupware tools have the potential to significantly improve these disadvantages. In New Zealand, proportionally more IT investment has gone into low-end machines - LANs & micros - than big mainframes. This means that the LAN/micro infrastructure which supports groupware applications may be proportionally more developed here, and therefore fertile ground on which to grow. We do pride ourselves on taking advantage of early overseas experiences by being a year or two behind the play, and perhaps the timing for groupware growth in New Zealand is just about right according to this philosophy. On the other hand, there appears to be a lower awareness, or perhaps reluctance, on the part of many NZ managers on the strategic use of leading edge information technology to gain competitive advantage. IT innovations are often seen first overseas in very large organisations, which means the NZ community, with predominately small and medium sized organisations, is less likely to be exposed to these kind of innovations early in their life cycle. Will our particular New Zealand environment lead to more rapid, or more cautious investigations and usage of groupware technology? What are the mechanics in the stages of awareness, investigation, trialling and full scale
implementation that need to happen for groupware to be widely successful? What will we lose by being a little bit behind the overseas leaders? Awareness of the existence, and potential of groupware products is the necessary first step in providing the answers to these questions in New Zealand.
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