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Success Factors for Collaboratories

Gary M. OlsonCollaboratory for Research on Electronic Work

School of Information

University of Michigan

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Background

• UM experience – roughly a dozen collaboratory projects– Some examples

• UARC/SPARC – upper atmospheric physics• Great Lakes CFAR – HIV/AIDS research• NeesGrid – earthquake engineering

• Science of Collaboratories Project

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Science of Collaboratories

• Goals– Comparative analysis of collaboratory projects– Extraction of general principles and design methods

• Apply and test with new emerging projects

– Creation of Collaboratory Knowledge Base• Methods

– Data base of collaboratories• Collaboratories at a Glance (more than 80 so far)• In-depth studies (4 completed, up to 20 as goal)

– Invitational workshops• 3 held so far

– Web site: www.scienceofcollaboratories.org

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Definition

• A collaboratory is– An organizational entity– That links a community of individuals– Working at a distance– On common problems or tasks…

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Definition

• …that contains– Electronic tools that support– Rich and recurring human interaction and– Provides common access to resources,

including information and instrumentation, needed to engage in the problems or tasks.

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CollaboratoryCollaboratory

DigitalLibraries, E-Pub

access toinformation

access to facilities

people-to-peopleCommunication,

GroupwareServices

Distributed,media-richinformationtechnology

Interaction withthe Physical

World

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Kinds of Collaboratories• Research focus

– Distributed Research Center– Shared instrumentation– Community Data Systems

• Practice focus– Virtual Community of Practice– Virtual learning community– Expert consultation

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Distributed Research Center

• Functions like a University research center, but at a distance.

• Project is unified by a topic area of interest, and includes a number of joint projects in that area.

• Most communication human-human• No well specified product as the focus

• Alliance for Cell Signaling

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Shared Instrument

• Increases access to a scientific instrument

• Often remote access to an expensive instrument

• Often supplemented with other technology to support communication

• Keck observatory

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Community Data System

• Information resource that is created, maintained, or improved by a distributed community

• Information is semi-public, of wide interest.

• Cell signaling molecule pages

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Virtual Community of Practice

• A network of individuals who share a research area and communicate about it online

• Share news of professional interest, advice, techniques.

• Not focused on joint projects

• Ocean US

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Virtual Learning Community

• Main focus is on increasing the knowledge of the participants– Not to do original research

• Can be inservice or professional development

• Ecological Circuitry Laboratory

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Expert Consultation

• Provides increased access to an expert or set of experts

• The flow of information is mainly one way, rather than two way as in a distributed center

• TeleInViVo

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Key

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Distributed Center

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Shared Instrument

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Community Data System

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Virtual Community of Practice

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Virtual Learning Community

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Expert Consultation

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Success Factors

• Success is a complex concept (73 different ideas)– Use of tools (10)– Software technology (3)– Direct effects on science (33)– Science careers (3)– Effects on learning, science education (12)– Inspiration for other collaboratories (3)– Learning about collaboratories (2)– Effects on funding, public perception (7)

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Success Factors

• Hard to measure many of these kinds of success– Projects poorly documented– Goals better documented than outcomes– What were the “real” outcomes?

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Lessons Learned

• Readiness– Collaboration readiness– Infrastructure readiness– Collaboration technology readiness

• Funding models

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Collaboration Readiness

• Some disciplines, specialties, or organizations naturally share, others do not

• What are the incentives for sharing?

• Mechanisms for sharing– Informal: Trust– Formal: Covenants, rules of the road

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Collaboratories at Risk

• Collaborations that arise for exogenous reasons– Funding draw– Funder mandate

• Competition stronger than cooperation– Rivalries – individual or organizational

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Infrastructure Readiness

• Technical– Networking– Services– Homogeneity vs. heterogeneity

• E.g., Wintel vs Mac vs Unix

• Social– Technical support– Administrative control of it

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Collaboration Technology

Readiness• email• attachments• using repositories• calendaring • creating repositories Need training in

• hand-off collaboration technologies AND

• synchronous collaboration how to collaborate

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Funding Models

• How does the money flow?

• What are its sources?

• Who has control of it?

• Conjecture – this will be another success factor

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Two Examples

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What Brings Success?

• It’s not just the technology

• Social and organizational factors surrounding the selection, deployment, and use of technology will be key