Gartner Identifies Five Myths about Collaboration 
To help organizations avoid collaboration missteps, Gartner experts will discuss five popular myths about collaboration between IT and business at its PPM and IT Governance Summit in London next week. Knowing these myths, Gartner says, will help get your collaboration projects on the road to success. IDN takes a preview.
To help organizations avoid collaboration missteps, Gartner experts will discuss five popular myths about collaboration between IT and business at its PPM and IT Governance Summit in London next week.
As a basic premise, the reason many collaboration initiatives fail, according to Gartner’s Carol Rozwell, vice president and distinguished analyst, is because IT leaders make wrong assumptions about some basic issues. “There are five myths that derail collaboration initiatives,” Rozwell explained. “Rather than making technology the starting point, IT leaders should first identify real business problems and key performance indicators (KPIs) that link to business goals.”
At Gartner’s PPM and IT Governance Summit, Gartner analysts and industry experts will examine these myths and discuss how to prioritize their IT initiatives, while balancing the use of resources. Speakers will also examine how to manage, fund and govern portfolio of IT investments and projects.
As a preview, here are Rozwell’s five myths about collaboration. If any of these sound familiar, you may have faced a failed collaboration:
1. The right tools will make us collaborative
Although technology can make it easier to collaborate, you shouldn’t select a tool without addressing roles, processes, metrics and the organization’s workplace climate.
2. Collaboration is inherently a good thing
If you don’t know what you want to achieve by using social benefit to improve collaboration, you probably won’t get anything out of it. The most successful social media initiatives solve real business problems.
3. Collaborating takes extra time
If you don’t integrate collaboration and social software tools with other critical applications, workers must shift context, which slows them down or duplicate effort (e.g., cut/paste from one application to another).
4. People naturally will/will not collaborate
As an IT leader, you should ignore the minority of employees who don’t want to collaborate. You should motivate the majority of workers who can be persuaded to collaborate by making you expectations clear and rewarding collaborative behavior.
5. People instinctively know how to collaborate
Organizations must have a clear set of guidelines describing how people should interact with each other to achieve the best results. You should clarify what attitudes workers who need to bring to their work, what abilities and skills they need to master and what personal style work best in a team setting. Additionally managers must demonstrate the same behaviors they want their employees to exhibit.
“IT leaders should first identify real business problems and key performance indicators (KPIs) that link to business goals.”
Carol Rozwell
Vice President
Distinguished Analyst
Gartner
Garter’s PPM and IT Governance Summit is held June 14-15 in London. Topics will include: Do you need an Enterprise PMO; How to cope with continuing change as a PPM leader; How to show execs the limits of IT Resources and others. Featured speakers include Michael Hanford (Gartner-Research Vice President), Audrey Apfel (Gartner-Managing Vice President), Steve Delgrosso (IBM, Director of Project Management Center of Excellence) and Anne Skare Nielsen (Chief Futurist and Partner, Futurenavigator & Futurenavigator Club).
