Groupware--from Another Perspective
by Susanna Opper

We stand at an interesting crossroads in history--not only in
the history of computers, but in human history. We've reached a
level of evolution which permits (and even requires) us to
investigate and get knowledgeable about things human beings have
always taken for granted.

Think of a fish's relationship to water. The fish doesn't
differentiate "water". Water is its environment--all that it
knows. In the realm of human behavior, our "water" is process:
communication, coordination, cooperation, competition,
organization. Of these, only organization has been the subject
of major study by large groups of people, and even that is a
modern effort.

Man is fundamentally a toolmaker, and the computer is his latest
tool. Today, for the first time in history, we have a tool that
we can use to manipulate our "water," those fundamental elements
in our organizational--or group--process.

I come to workgroup computing not from data bases and word
processing, or even from electronic mail. I've spent the last
seven years working in the field of computer conferencing--an
arcane group of software products that, for well over a decade,
have allowed users to hold electronic "virtual" meetings.

For a variety of reasons, that technology is unlikely to make a
major impact as a discrete software product. Instead, the
computer conferencing concept will become a function in other
groupware products, because the work innovative business people
are doing with that technology is the same work groupware will
handle. And this work is not all traditionally done with
paper and forms. It's done at the water cooler and by phone,
it's done in face-to-face meetings, at off-site gatherings, and
even on the golf course.

Groupware is not just the ability to automate tedious,
time-consuming, boring tasks (if this exceeds Charlie's
authorization limit, pass it to Donna), though it includes
that. If we are freed from finding the nail for the horse's
shoe, we can deal with the strategic and tactical issues of
waging and winning the war. Even more interestingly, we can get
past the need to have the war at all, and into fundamental
issues of cooperation and collaboration that can elevate work to
a new level of interest and effectiveness.

For me, groupware's promise is in creating true collaboration.
And I see collaboration as more than cooperation.

Cooperation is when two or more people work together on a task
or project, where the work serves their individual goals. Let's
say we're neighbors in a remote area after a large snowstorm,
and we each need to get into town. We might cooperate by
digging out one driveway and driving one car into town, where we
will each do our separate and unrelated tasks.

Assistance or support is when someone helps me do my task.

Collaboration is different in kind. In collaboration each
member of the team brings to an effort some skill or quality
others lack, so that the product or outcome of their efforts is
greater than what one person or the group could do without the
others. Consider the collaboration of a composer and a
lyricist--think of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The words and music
they created is a far richer entity than either the poem
Hammerstein wrote or the melody Rodgers composed. It is a
song. A different thing all together.Collaboration includes in
it the concepts of symbiosis and synergy. In nature symbiosis
is a process that cannot occur without two or more disparate
elements coming together in combination. Synergy is a state
where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Accompanying true collaboration is an energy or excitement that
is almost tangible. It's a snap of the fingers. Someone saying,
"That's it." And everyone else knowing that IS it.

Though almost impossible to talk about, nearly everyone has one
or several experiences of this excitement--it's when the ideas
are flowing so quickly from one to the other that every member
of the group is fully present, totally engaged, hardly able to
contain their excitement. One person says something, and
someone builds on that, and another on that. All of a sudden,
someone else says: "Why don't we. . . ." and the truly creative
solution is born.

Thus collaborative software will allow two or more people to
create something greater than what each could do alone. It will
somehow simulate or recreate the process of face-to-face
collaboration. To begin to understand how this will work, we
need to know a good deal more about real-time
collaboration--about how synergy articulates itself in the work
environment.

The root of synergy, by the way, is from New Latin, synergismus,
in turn from Greek sunergos, "working together: sun-,
"together" + ergon, "work." Once we see this as our task, we
are cautioned to pause. For we realize that we don't know much
about these things--about our "water." One major vendor known
to be working in this area told me recently, "Sure, we're
waiting for OS/2 and the Presentation Manager, but more
importantly, we aren't ready to announce our product yet because
we have work to do to understand it all."

In the best of times in the computer conferencing environment,
we've had hints of collaborative work. We've had ideas carried
from place to place--ideas that lead to actions that made real
differences in organizations. We've had little miracles of
modern communication occur where one person needed to reach
another, or needed information, or had a personal tragedy.
And from all over the world, little electronic pulses became
access to a critical resource, the answer to a boss's request,
an electronic arm around the shoulder.

Conferencing itself is too wild and undisciplined to be the
ultimate groupware in its category. It, like electronic mail,
lacks a way to conveniently corral useful information and
separate it from the clutter. But in addition to automating the
paper shuffling, I expect groupware will also have a powerful
impact on how people actually work in groups, so that the
limits of time and space that have, up to now, constrained
workgroups will be lifted, and we can begin to be any place at
any time and have our team at our fingertips whenever we need
them.

This concept of instant access to team members is critical for
it reaches to the heart of where successful businesses and
organizations will be separated from their losing competitors.
We're beginning to see the white-collar analog of
manufacturing's time to market--the length of time it takes
to get a product from the first inspiration to the hands of the
customer. The margin of time reduction a company can create
over its competitors is, almost literally, money in the bank.

Executives and knowledge workers have an analogous challenge I
call "time to decision ". The concept assumes that where time
is wasted in most companies (and thus where profit is
surrendered) is in the time it takes to reach a decision. In
many cases, taking action on the decision is the easy part. Of
course, in a long and complicated project, this time to decision
principle is recursive. For example, having made the decision
to enter a new market, an infinity of smaller decisions can
still delay the project and curtail the company's competitive
edge.

It's important to remember that groupware's ultimate success in
the marketplace will be a function of its return on investment.
And the investment will not only be in time and money. It will
also be in effort and energy. For the qualities that will make
groupware a challenge to create are the same qualities that will
challenge organizations to implement it. For the effective
implementation of groupware in an organization will be a group
outcome forged from individual commitment. And only when each
individual in the group is enrolled in using the groupware, can
it be effective at all.

Today's groupware products are primitive outlines of where the
technology can go. Many of today's products assume groups
really know how to work together. Some stand on philosophical
foundations about how groups ought to work together, but even
the developers of existing products in this area acknowledge
that what they have so far developed is only a halting,
beginning stab at where they eventually plan to go.

Building this software will itself be a collaboration between
software and systems experts, the guys who cut code, the
theorists, experts in group process and human communication, and
the dreamers.

From today's beginnings will come products that can actually
intervene in group process. Products that will, essentially, be
able to give the group feedback, to remind members that they
have agendas and objectives, and, eventually, actually take on
some of the role of facilitator. Someday there will be software
that, as you use it, enhances your skill in working in
groups--your computer will help you to collaborate with other
people.

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Susanna Opper, a New York City based consultant, helps companies
use computers to improve workgroup communication and
productivity. She also works with developers on new concepts
and products.