Humans are creatures of habit.  We do not often review our working methods nor where they originated.  This results in carrying on with old habits, even when they are out of date.  An example I heard of was at the beginning of the (was it?) second world war, the British Army was reviewing its processes for firing artillery.  Just as everything was ready, four soldiers stood in a rectangular formation around the gun, then stood still until after the shell was fired.

The reason?  Apparently this was a hangover from earlier times when the guns were pulled into place by horses.  The four soldiers used to hold the horses reins, to calm them as the gunshot noise occurred.

Another example is the design of railway coaches based on compartments.  At the time when the first railways were built in the 1830′s, horse drawn coaches were common.  These had a door on each side and bench seats facing forward and backward, at right angles to the direction of travel.  It was quite natural that the same format was used for railway coaches.  To make the coaches longer, several compartments were constructed, each remaining inaccessible from the others.

When I was young this arrangement was still in use.  It is however inefficient, as passengers could not move around to find unused seats.  This resulted in some parts of the train being overcrowded, while elsewhere there was room.  Most modern trains are designed so that the passengers can move through from one coach to the next.  Some designs, such as the S-Bahn trains in Germany, the entire length of the train is open.

It seems that sometimes a habit or tradition results in inefficient use of resources, just because nobody stopped to think of better ways.

Traditional E-mail reflects older Work Patterns

E-mail has been available for several decades.  At the time it was invented, the usual way of conveying written text to a business associate was in a letter, which was delivered by the postal service.  Two key features were that the delivery time was anything but instantaneous, while the writer often used assistants to actually prepare the page.

E-mail resolved the delivery delay issue:  e-mail is delivered effectively instantaneously.  With the arrival of the PC (Personal Computer, as it was called) the originator of the mail also typed it him or herself.  All the other work patterns remained:

• A message is sent from one person to another. A reply, possibly with comments and changes, is sent back.
• If a message is sent to several people at once, the responses are not necessarily coordinated and the result is several versions of the same document.
• The reader has to interpret the context of the e-mail from a (sometimes very) long inbox.  This involves opening of mail, then opening other documents.  To respond the writer has to make reference to the context in addition writing any responses.

I could go further, but anyone whose daily inbox is out of control will recognise the feeling! This is quite different from the comments made about a Facebook photograph, where the comments and context are presented together.

Working with Business Objects instead of Messages

The number of e-mails and the time needed to digest and reply to them can be reduced dramatically by reversing the pattern of communication by working with Business Objects.  By this I mean that the focus of the work becomes the reference point for discussion and feedback, not the e-mail system.

Examples of business objects include:

• Projects
• Documents
• Reports
• etc

to which comments are attached (see figure).  Instead of sending messages to an inbox, the link to the message is sent.  This means that the time consuming mental process of working out the context of each message is completely avoided.

Sample Applications for Object Oriented Messaging

Although successful virtual working depends first and foremost on how people interact (“business process”), the tools themselves have a huge influence on many processes.  The format of traditional e-mail has already been mentioned and its influence is clear.

There are many tools that demonstrate the object oriented approach to a greater or lesser extent:

• LotusLive is “a collection of integrated, online collaboration solutions and social networking services”.  Among the functions offered are messaging, file sharing and project management. Activities, for example, can be communicated using RSS feeds which show the reader the content headlines, without logging on.  This is the same technology used to read news from online newspapers.
• The interface for Basecamp supports project management and assignment of activities to milestones.  Comments and replies can be attached to the activities.  These comments are e-mailed automatically to the intended reader with a link direct to the relevant object, as well as a photograph of the author.  This means that the process of finding the context is completely automated and far less time consuming.
• Google Wave carries this approach further by allowing comments within the text and even comments about comments! It also supports chat-type messages in both directions at once and real-time multi-lingual communication.

These tools are selected as examples because they give an idea of what is possible when traditional e-mail is replaced by an object oriented approach. Making this fundamental change to old habits requires both communication tools which implement these ideas AND a decision to change the ways of working.  The payback is a very worthwhile reduction in the time merely spent on sorting and interpreting messages.  In other words, they reduce your Inbox Overload.

It took a century for railway coaches to leave their horse-and-coach origins but things change faster these days!

Clipart: Acknowledgements to FCIT.

Of these two areas, Virtualization relates to the efficiency of the IT service, whereas Cloud Computing affects strongly how users can interact with the IT service.  Cloud Computing is therefore of particular relevance to Scatterwork clients.

On a scale of 1 (just started) to 5 (completely implemented), over 85% report implementation levels 1 and 2.  This means that the survey results about the drawbacks are particularly relevant:

• 65% report that their company does not have the in-house competence.
• 27% have data security concerns, 22% think the concept of Cloud Computing unproven, and nearly 17% because of the demand on management. Together this represents two thirds of all respondents who are not convinced by Cloud Computing.

Food for thought!

• To save office space and building costs.  This is the most immediate benefit for many companies.
• To increase capability by reducing commuting dead time.
• An Environmentally friendly image.
• Skills not available in the locality, country or time zone.
• To extend service outside local working hours.
• To maintain participation of employees during periods of illness and convalescence.
• To retain the active contribution of retired colleagues.
• Happier, healthier employees.

When Employees want…

• To save the costs, time and pollution associated with commuting.
• Less interruptions during work, so reducing stress.
• Better work-life balance.
• To work at any hour of the day or night that is personally suitable, e.g. when there are young children in the family.
• To maintain their professional presence during periods of convalescence.
• To transition to retirement, instead of making an abrupt departure.

When Authorities want…

• To reduce carbon footprint.
• To minimise the demand on Pension Funds by allowing retiral-age workers to continue to earn, without requiring them to travel to work.
• To limit commuting infrastructure growth and related costs.
• To (re)integrate working mothers, accident victims, disabled etc. in workforce.

Telecommuting is about using telecommunications to avoid commuting. This implies that somewhere there is a workplace where much of the business is carried out which the telecommuter links into.  If there are several telecommuters, the pattern can is like a star, with a central hub. The telecommunications are seen as a way of reducing the overhead, such as daily travel and the time it takes.

Virtual Teamwork is about the team being geographically distributed, whether there is a central workplace or not. This implies that the members are in contact with each other, not only with the workplace location.  This way of working frees teams from the constraints of geography while of course brings other challenges with it.  Whether it is worthwhile depends on the  situation.

Scatterwork® enables strategic improvements in team productivity, flexibility and green credentials by releasing knowledge-based work from the constraints of co-location. This means that:

• the unproductive time, cost and environmental pollution side effects of commuting and travel are hugely reduced.
• recruiting members regardless of their location globally becomes possible. As a result the best can be selected globally according to skills, availability and cost, not according to where they live.

In times of turbulence when there are mass redundancies, business will need to get the best possible benefit out of their resources (and I don’t mean “code for people”).  Virtual Teamwork can be used as follows:

• After a redundancy programme everyone is under pressure.  This pressure can be reduced for some by reducing the amount of commuting they have to do, e.g a couple of days a week.  Not only is significant time released but experience shows that employees who are trusted in this way actually deliver more!
• Another way of getting the best out of resources is to allow redundant/ retired/ ill employees to participate in Virtual Teamwork.  In this way the company retains the contact with an eye to better times in the future.

What other situations lend themselves to Virtual Teamwork? What are your experiences?