Crysis Week4 Ex

Collaboration Learning

Intent

The word intent or intention is usually connected with desire and determination but in a less powerful meaning.

A working definition for intention is: “to have in mind a purpose or plan, to direct the mind, to aim.” Lacking intention, we sometimes stray without meaning or direction. “Only a few things about teams are sure, and one is this: successful teams have clear goals.” quoted from Glenn Parker’s book, Cross-Functional Teams. Without a shared vision, intention and goals to support a teams main vision which in our case the desire of high achievement, teams will fracture along personal views and functional lines and the project will fail.

Purpose

Why are you doing this project? What will be different when you finish the project successfully? Without a clear purpose, you will not be able to tell if the project is successful or not. For example, a project purpose might be “to shorten the customer’s learning curve.”

Goal

What are you going to do in order to accomplish the purpose? A project with the purpose of shortening the c ustomer learning curve might have a goal of “ simplify the user interface: or “ improve available training material.: Note that purpose and goals are not the same.

Major milestones

How are you going to accomplish the goals, and by when? You do not need to duplicate the task or schedule sections (those come later in the plan); just summarize them at this point.

References

M.Katerine (kit) Brown, Brenda Huetture, and Char James-Tanny (2007), Managing Virtual Teams, Worldware Publishing, Plano.

Kurt Verweire and Lutgart Van Ben Berghe (2004), Integrated Performance Management, Sage Publication, London.

http://healing.about.com/od/marciawieder/a/powerintention.htm. Accessed on 21st of April

Context

From Word Power Dictionary of Readers Digest, the word context meaning the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea. Context may be one of the most important cultural variables for virtual teams.

In high-context cultures, messages have little meaning without an understanding of the surrounding context. People from high-context cultures prefer more historical information and more subjective personal opinions. People from low-context cultures prefer more objective and “fact-based” information.

Members from high-context cultures may prefer communicatons that are able to carry a great deal of contextual information. This implies that information-rich technologies that convey a number of clues regarding meaning may be modre suited to a team with a number of members from high-context cultures. High-context cultures include China, Japan, Greece, Mexico etc. Moderate-context cultures include Italy, France, Britain etc. Low context cultures include English Canada, USA, Germany.

The collaborative context

Collaboration is the degree to which people in an organization can combine their mental efforts so as to achieve common goals.

Collaborative technologies have changed the context of interaction completely. Many conversations can take place at the same time. Ideas generated by different people on a shared screen for all to see inspire conversations within the group. Ideas are both external and manipulable. People can create icons to represent ideas and concepts, which others can modify or manipulate until they become both community property and a visual part of the conversation.

Electronic collaboration is the use of networking and collaborative technologies to support groups in the creation of shared understanding. Electronic collaboration fosters new kinds of collective work made possible with advanced collaboration technologies. The use of collaborative technologies enables conversations with new kinds of prosperities.

References

Vlatka Hlupic, (2002), Knowledge and business process management, Idea Group Inc (IGI), Hershey

Deborah L. Duarte, Nancy Tennant Snyder (2006), Mastering virtual teams: strategies, tools, and techniques that succeed, John Wiley and Sons. Stafford BC