The Next Enterprise Collaboration Wave - Google Wave what else?
A lot has been talked about Google Wave over the last 2-3 weeks since Google publicly announced their secret project in I/O conference. The most interesting aspect of the chatter about Google Wave is that its in the enterprise space. Thats right a lot of Enterprise 2.0 bloggers, evangelists, early tech followers/adopters are talking about Google Wave and possible implications to enterprise collaboration. This is the first time I have seen such a large open source initiative receiving enterprise focus from the get go and I believe its for the right reasons. See Dion Hinchcliffe article on Wave’s enterprise implications. Like he says it might be too early to say how this play out at the end but it does have a huge potential to shape future Enterprise collaboration platforms.
On the other hand Hutch Carpenter says this could be a faraway dream and his concerns are valid, Google Wave will not come for free, Enterprises have to implement, maintain and monitor. Hutch is not alone in pointing out that Enterprises will have a uphill mountain to climb to get into Google, Elias Bizannes says it will take a generation for this to happen. Jake Kuramoto at theappslab expresses concern about the unknowns (security, compatibility, technology constraints, integrations, uptake, interoperability).
The overall theme I have seen in the reactions is that there is great hope for Google Wave to be a huge hit in Enterprises but still lot of unknowns, which I tend to agree.
However, are we left with any other option right now? Sure we have blogs, wikis, micro-sharing enterprise apps like Yammer, even some friendfeed style tools like SocialCast and more mega collab tools like SocialText , but really after seeing how collaboration should be done in real time with aggregation and centralization, can you see any of the existing collaboration tools doing all that? Wave does not replace those but it brings them together. Which is exactly the problem the enterprises have right now, too many disconnected systems to deal with. Let me take some samples and use a ‘really’ segment to express my frustration with the current tools:
- PMs have a system to store requirements, architects and designers have a place to store their specs, coders and reviewers have a space to publish their code and reviews. Really? Shouldn’t everything be related by the requirement so that everyone from PM, Architect, Manager, Developer, Documenter have the knowledge on whats happening for that requirement?
- Forget about 1000 people, imagine a company dealing with 1000 teams small and large, yeah large Enterprise baby, can you imagine the number of different tools they use for collaboration? Can you imagine being in an integration team? Its a nightmare. Shouldn’t there be a standard for that collaboration?
- To schedule a project, manager enters the high level tasks based on requirements, send that list to tech leads/developers for details,discussions happen on email and when finalized enters them back into to MS project or equivalent online scheduling tool. Really? Please, someone save me. Can I just type free text “Task xyz to be completed on 1/1/2010 by @ABC” and have the relevant dev add details and ask questions right there? Can I have a robot just create a schedule task based on the task name, due date, assigned person and sub tasks?
- U get a critical bug assigned to your product. You start email, IM discussions with you team, looking at different angles to determine if its a known issue or not etc. Within an hour you get an email from the escalation manager/customer support rep/or sometimes from way high up on why there is no activity in the bug database. Really? Someone needs it to be updated saying that you are discussing? Or with the new Enterprise 2.0 style micro-sharing you need to update your status? Really, shouldn’t the discussions be discoverable (may not be by everyone but with some authority hierarchy and topic ownership) or Mr. solve everything robot be able to show a threaded discussion with the bug to show the activity in the team?
- You design a feature, get it reviewed with all the 10 integration teams and implement it. You end up making a change to the feature, you update the spec, now set a meeting, send an email or blog about the changes etc to let them know. But really? I have to do all that again? Can I just update the doc and be done with it?
The point I am trying to make here is, Enterprise collaboration as it stands is broken, its slow, its disconnected, its not universal, its not standard. Enterprises are building/trying various things around collaboration, however with a lack of standard, lack of defined process they will create only more disconnected systems. Like email Wave has to become the collaboration standard that can bring these disconnected systems together and automate mundane process. It might take years to happen, someone has to implement all this stuff, but I don’t see an alternative do you? I am not jumping on this tide because its new, I have genuinely been thinking about the collaboration issues and been looking for something like Google Wave to come to the rescue. I blogged couple of months ago about some related thoughts: http://bit.ly/3Nfw3X
Can all those concerns expressed by the enterprise community be just opportunities for Enterprises and Individuals to solve real world problems?
