Ever since the consumer embrace of social networking applications there has been a land grab to take social into the enterprise. But guess what the consumer model CAN NOT work in the enterprise!
In the consumer landscape there are entire age groups that ignore email. This is not to say they do not message… they are just stuck on a different type of messaging, Facebook, BBM, IM and others. The truth is we humans love messaging. So what is it about messaging platforms and why do we use different solutions? The teen generation is not social networking in order to deliver work, they connect to stay up with what is going on and where the next party is. But at work we message to get something delivered. There is a huge value difference between these groups when comparing the impact of not reading something.
Do you read everything on your Facebook page? Of course not. Do you really need to read everything on your facebook page? Of course not. But at work we are drawn to read every email, the moment it arrives, because it might have something to do with what we are trying to get done… it might have something to do with our work and what we need to deliver.
So what about Facebook being used in a design team? It will never work! Jim wrote about this not to long ago http://tech-clarity.com/clarityonplm/?s=facebook. IMHO he missed the most important issue. Noise… You do not read everything on your Facebook page because most of it just doesn’t matter. Even though there is a high level of noise in consumer based social solutions every application provider that has targeted the enterprise with a social solution has used the same consumer model. The consumer social model is simple, you follow someone, ie you friend someone. Well can you imagine if you followed everyone you had some sort of working relationship with? YOUR INBOX WOULD EXPLODE and you would GET NOTHING DONE!
Enterprise social tools are going to endup road kill! It is only a matter of time before they become the next WAVE (see death of WAVE).
OK so why is a guy who is selling an Enterprise Social System for Manufacturing standing up and saying Enterprise Social Solutions are going to fail??? Simple. The relationship model in Vuuch is different and the relationship model in other social tools targeting the enterprise are wrong, wrong and wrong! Of course we have friends at work, people we have lunch with etc, but an Enterprise Social System must understand that our lunch relationships are not what we want when it comes to getting things done. An Enterprise Social System of course is people centric but more important it is content centric. An Enterprise Social System for Manufacturing also understands that our connections with content vary over time and that for any one piece of content a single person may have multiple connections. For example I might be the owner of a design specification, as well as I might be involved in two discussions about it and even more I might be resolving a set of issues requiring changes to the specification.
OK so why is a guy who is selling an Enterprise Social System for Manufacturing standing up and saying Enterprise Social Solutions are going to fail??? Simple. Content matters! In the enterprise people work to deliver very specific types of deliverables. The fact that content matters is no secret, but in the enterprise people are not going to sit around and blog, record videos of meetings or podcast, they are focused on getting something done. An Enterprise Social System for Manufacturing understands what the team is delivering, a product. For example if a design engineer needs to complete the design of a part they are not going to blog about what they are doing or record videos of the problems they have. That said they are going to record design issues that need to be resolved.
OK so why not make the PLM tools social? PLM tools cannot be social. PLM targets structure, control and is only embraced by a small number of users. Design issues are connected to everyone in the enterprise and cross multiple applications. Imagine a simple design problem that connects together a purchase order, a part and people from purchasing, the vendor and engineering. This simple problem touches the CAD and ERP systems and maybe PLM (in many cases it would not), but most certainly it connects to people who will never be a PLM user.
[...] Oleg on August 18, 2010 · View Comments I had a chance to read Enterprise Road Kill by The Vuuch Voice. The discussion Chris suggested in his post is going around usage of social [...]
[...] Social Detour I had a chance to read Enterprise Road Kill by The Vuuch Voice. The discussion Chris suggested in his post is going around usage of social [...]
I am not sure comparing Google Wave as a social tool is correct. Vuuch, correct me if I’m wrong, was created to solve a problem. Hosted discussions, get rid of copies and centralize the conversation. Wave was build under the same premise but unlike Vuuch which extended the solution with local integrations into the tools engineering and manufacturing use on a daily basis, Wave had all these capabilities but was not created to solve a specific problem. I would even go as far as Wave was a computer science problem to see how much can be done in a browser and the platform was in search of a problem to solve.
I doubt there are many that use Wave as much as I do and as someone who uses tools and integrates many solutions to solve a problem, Wave was great.
With 1M active users, it was far from failure in most product’s eys but to Google, it was not adopted enough.
PLM can be social but that social part needs to be within the scope of the project. Having “Status” messages is a way to keep the group in tune but not sharing details about your lunch decisions is a question of tact.
The more these enterprise tools allow people to interact like they do in person, the more successful these teams will be.
In my view, the main purpose of Vuuch is to improve collaboration. Web 2.0 and other social tools and technologies (btw, I agree with Lou, Wave is one of them) can provide a way to provide a better way to collaborate, compared to what PLM and other enterprise companies are doing today. Tracking conversation was a good start. There are more thoughts on this in my blog post – PLM Social Detours (http://beyondplm.com/2010/08/18/plm-social-detours/). Best, Oleg
Collaboration is such an overused and meaningless word. Of course people are working together in product development. The point is to define the features and benefits a solution like an Enterprise Social System for Manufacturing provides rather than pasting it with a meaningless word. Oleg, although I am not sure you meant to you did put at odds collaboration and social. The truth is these are not the same. It is very interesting to read Wikipedia definitions for collaboration, collaborative product development and social media you will see the definitions show these as different.
Reading the Wikipedia definition for Social Media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media you quickly see it is about user published content in a platform that allows exchange. And on the page “collaboration” is used only once. An Enterprise Social System for Manufacturing brings to life content and relationship types that extend the consumer based social model, making it relevant to a class of users. In an ESS for Manufacturing, use case specific content is created within the context of what the users is creating, a part of a product, creating dynamic links to people and content. Another difference between consumer based social and enterprise based social is the understanding that the relationships are dynamic. It is uncommon and I expect rare that you remove a friend in Facebook, but in design the connections you have with team members and parts is very dynamic.
I challenge you all to stop using the word collaboration. Just try for a few weeks. When you are struck to say/write collaboration stop and try to be more specific.
[...] time collaborator in collaborative discussions, Chris Williams of Vuuch once in the comment to his blog post on Vuuch Voice, challenged me to stop using a word “collaboration” for few weeks. This [...]
[...] time collaborator in collaborative discussions, Chris Williams of Vuuch once in the comment to his blog post on Vuuch Voice, challenged me to stop using a word "collaboration" for few weeks. This is [...]