Collaboration Challenges: Bridging the IT Support Gap

The more collaborative enterprises are, the better they perform. However, current collaboration technologies do not contribute as much as expected to collaboration quality. Collaboration technology seems to be stuck in just overcoming the limitation of people not being in the same place at the same time. Real time communications are supported through such things as web-conferencing and instant messaging, while email, wikis, and web-based repositories provide the electronic equivalent of the shared file cabinet. Although some technologies support workflow and project management to a degree, there is little support for the joint development lifecycle of planning, creating, evaluating, negotiating, and consolidating group work. Focusing broadly on collaboration challenges highlights limitations of current technology and can help provide direction for the kinds of information technology that will be needed to bridge the IT support gap to meet current and future collaboration challenges.