(2003-07-31) Tony Kontzer Collaborationware

Stowe Boyd summarizes Tony Kontzer's article on Collaboration Ware. It's no longer enough to collaborate in an isolated silo, no matter how accessible that silo may be. Rather, collaboration is a critical part of many companies' software infrastructures. Meaning upper management wants cross-team value. The danger is that push-down solutions have lower odds of team adoption, and I believe that the team is where the greatest value lies. Having a unified, top-level view of all the pieces of a product in development has brought numerous benefits, including more-efficient compliance with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements, but it isn't enough. "What's next is a Project Portfolio Management piece," Paul Loda (of Bausch And Lomb) (an ERoom customer) says. Uh-oh. But Daniel Oertli also wants to see Groove and Team Direction create triggers for enterprise processes, such as using XML messages to spur transactions within an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. "We're seeing a crossover between Project Management tools and Business Process Management systems," he says.