By Fayez Alqahtani

A study conducted by Alexander Benlian and Thomas Hess (2008) titled “The Adoption of and Satisfaction with Web2.0 Based Collaboration and Knowledge Management Technologies in Global Software Development – Insights from an Empirical” will be reviewed in this post.

According to this paper several Web 2.0 tools started to be adopted in organisation. Web 2.0 technologies are suitable platforms for collaboration and knowledge management.  It has been started to be used particularly in distributed nature of organisations like software companies.  This research looked at the adoption of  Web2.0 in global software development firms, and the satisfaction of Web2.0 Collaboration and Knowledge Management Technologies in this type of organisation.

There are 7 web 2.0 tools has been investigated to assess the level of web 2.0 adoption and to know the type of work that these tools used in. These tools are web services, collective intelligence, peer-to-peer, social networking, RSS, podcast, wikis, blogs and mush-ups. Around the half of IT managers asked to assess the level of the web 2.0 technologies adoption say that their companies plan to adopt them. Social networking, RSS and wikis are some of the most relevant tools for collaboration and Knowledge Management in the global software development context from the employs point of view. On the other hand, most of the employs can see any relevant for mush-up. Around the half are satisfied with financial return on investment in these technologies over the past five years. Regarding to the main areas of using web 2.0 technologies in the software development process, the tools are variant. For example, in the plan face, the more participatory oriented tools like wiki, social networking and blogs are used.

The researchers conducted a survey with quantitative and qualitative questions.  In total 400 IT managers have been contacted to participate in the survey and 108 of them participated. Authors of this paper claimed that they did 3 case studies and in other part of the paper they stated that they reviewed three examples of organisations that adopted web 2.0. Even though this research is more specific on a particular type of business, it was important for me to analysis how this research investigated the adoption of web 2.0 and what the result is. This study shoes two factors that could drive the adoption of such technology. These factors are the distribution nature of the organisation geographic location. The second factor is the work type meaning if the work is collective and need group of people to do it, so organisations will be more motivated to adopt this technology.

References

Benlian, A., & Hess, T. (2008). The Adoption of and Satisfaction with Web2. 0 Based Collaboration and Knowledge Management Technologies in Global Software Development–Insights from an Empirical Study. Paper presented at the 19th Australasian Conference on Information Systems

Popularity: 1% [?]

By Fayez alqahtani

In the internet the most well-known approach to remember and retrieve interested information to users is bookmarking. This feature allow users to access their favourites from any computer, not only that but also they can share their bookmarks with other users. The use of social bookmarking website on the internet by organisation is problematic. Therefore, it is critical to investigate that if the enterprises will benefit from using social bookmarking system or not.

“Dogear: Social Bookmarking in the Enterprise” is research done by Millen, D., Feinberg, J. And Kerr, B. From IBM. This research found that almost one quarter of the bookmarks link to corporate intranet pages. There are two type of bookmarks one is privet and the other is shared which is open to all employs to access, but most of the bookmarks that have been created are shared which shows the Employ willing to share informational resources to benefit the enterprise. Employs’ actions regarding bookmarks are create, edit and click. However, the employ actions’ pattern shows that access the bookmarks are higher than creating them. In addition to that, employs believes that there are benefits from using such tool in the organisations like improving the employs awareness of corporate resources or services, improving employ’s ability to find information on the company intranet, increasing the employ awareness of their colleagues interests and expertise and improving the ability to find information resources on a particular topic. As a final point, assessing the usefulness of different internet and intranet information resources is one of the majeure benefits of an enterprise social bookmarking.

 This research has been done using a prototype social bookmarking tool has been developed and lunched on a corporate intranet. Employs state using the tool and based on the server log file of using this tool, researchers analysed the using of this tool. Follow up is survey of 100 employs how the most active were using the bookmarking tool. The aim of the survey is to obtain the employ perceived benefits from using the bookmarking tool inside the organisation.

Popularity: 10% [?]

By Fayez alqahtani

Computer Supported Collaboration Work (CSCW) has been used to enhance the collaboration effort in organisations. However, CSCW use is bounded by the organisational border and support a centralised collaboration fashion. Consequently, collaboration become in one direction from top of the organisation to the bottom; and this yield in poor knowledge sharing. On the other hand, the emerging internet technology (web 2.0) started to be used in the organisational context and grant for decentralised dynamic collaboration.

There is a numerous number of groupware applications have been developed to support collaboration, yet they are not completely successful for several responses. First, they provide organization centred collaboration which is one direction interactions channel for enterprise information instead of sharing knowledge tools on a peer to peer level. Secondly, Groupware tools have been designed for tree organizations, whereas the tendency is organizations need to become dynamic. Not only that but also, there are difficulties finding relevant information, lack of coherent design and structure. On the other side web 2.0 is social software technology on the internet that permit bidirectional communication between individuals which allow peer to peer level collaboration.It has been stated that there are four main features that characterize Web 2.0: Decentralization, Openness (free licenses on content, promotes collaboration) Dynamic applications development and User orientation. These features has taken CSCW one further step to enhance the collaboration work in organisations and emerge what we could called CSCW 2.0

Popularity: 8% [?]

Popularity: 8% [?]

By Fayez Alqahtani

Web 2.0 technology has become an important phenomena and many users around the world use it in their personal life. It is the social software that can be used to organize store tag and send information on the internet. There are attempt to use this technology in the business context, however its role in this context need to be defined and current business initiatives regarding web 2.0 technology need to be analysed in order to explore the issue of implementing web 2.0 in the business context.

The envisioned business roles of web 2.0 are communicating with customers, providing customer services, improving customer productivity, sharing employ knowledge, communication with employees and obtaining customer feedback. Moreover, customers themselves can engaged in an online shopping communities to share ideas about products and services in terms of price quality and so on. Whereas, using web 2.0 like wikis and blogs in workplace as a collaboration platform seems to be spectacled.

Popularity: 9% [?]

By Fayez Alqahtani

Rachael Kwai Fun IP and Christian Wagner wrote a paper for the Decision Support Systems journal on 2008 about how social computing tools like blogs could have an impact on organizations. In this post I am going to review and summaries this paper

Social software like web logging is now driving the spread of virtual communities, especially among young people. Web logs and other social computing software may have increasing impact on organizational computing. Therefore, there is need to understand social computing and study the role of web log as one optional social networking tool for young people. Also, and its probable evolution to the organizational computing is essentially to be studied and analysed.

Social computing is defined as any type of computing application that serves as an intermediary or a focus for a social relation. They early weblogs may have been used largely by the type of users with an interest in journalistic reporting, weblogs nowadays are increasingly attracting young people and this will reshape the social computing in organisations by shifting from traditional way of communication like emails. Current usages of weblogs are community building, journal writing, content management and personal dairy. Via this study four types of bloggers have been defined habitual, active, personal and blogging lurker. Every one of thous bloggers has frequent number of time to access blogs every day with a particular duration time and other characteristic. Bloggers are employs and customers how are valuable resources for the organization benefits. Therefore, organizations need to find ways to address their customers through the web logging medium to keep in touch with them for marketing and requirement gathering purposes. Moreover, organisations may wish to receive advantage of social computing skills and technology in order to improve organizational information processing and knowledge management.

The respected researchers reviewed weblogs and their role as a social networking device for young people and the possible evolution of social software to the organizational computing.  A qualitative approach has been taken in this research. There were interviews with several young bloggers who are university students. The 33 interviews have been analysed and the evaluation of the fit between technology features and the needs of these web loggers are reported. Technology Task fit model is a theory that investigates the technology adopting by organisation; this theory has been adopted and modified to understand the impact of blogs on organisations in a social realm. This study found that organizational computing will take advantage of employees’ social computing expertise and acceptance and to further capture the attention of customers.

Popularity: 26% [?]

By Fayez Alqahtni

This post is a review of article titled “Web 2.0 and Business a pointer to the intranets of the future” by Mr. Luke Tredinnick. Web 2.0 has been one of the most World Wide Web topics.  It promises more user engagement and interaction with information resources. Even though, there is an argument that says Web 2.0 is not a technological innovation, it changes the status of information, and knowledge, and user interact with the information applications. Therefore, it is important to explore the application of Web 2.0 technologies in organisations intranet. Not only that but also, investigating their possible usages in managing and developing enterprise information and knowledge assets is important too.

The author tended to explore how web 2.0 technologies can be used in business by reviewing the literature to define web 2.0, its most important tools and the advantages that this technology with recover up the traditional information management tools.

 Web 2.0 is a software application like wiki and blogs, new way of managing information and new business model. This type of software application provides users ability to publish their work easily and, aggregate and reuse the web content like in the case of blogs. Another type of software tool like wikis allows users to collaborate authoring the content. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) which is service that keeps users updated with information that has been posted by other person. Web 2.0 other than being emphasised more on the contributions of users in creating and organizing information comparing with the traditional information organization and retrieval approaches, it looks at the information and knowledge to be constructed in social interaction over time and this will add more value to the information.

This paper has explored web 2.0 and its application in organisations. It is valuable paper f because it highlighted some of the main web 2.0 advantages for information and knowledge management over the traditional knowledge management approach. It supports the idea that why we may need web 2.0 technologies in information and knowledge management inside organisations.

Popularity: 100% [?]

By fayez Alqahtani

Latest web technology called Web 2.0 has potential use in the public as well as in business. This technology can be used in organisations as a platform for communication and collaboration. Web 2.0 benefits enterprises. However some people have different opinion. They said that the use of web 2.0 in organisation introduces some issues and drawbacks.

 The social aspect of Web 2.0 makes it an important item in not only in people’s private lives but also at work. Besides that, web 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs are instruments to gather and organize people intelligence meaning information is both used and renewed. They are easy and flexible to use, and relatively cheap to bay. On the other hand, using this technology inside organisations creates knowledge based on the collective intelligent of employees have. However, some people said the use of web 2.0 in organisations cause web content management problems. Not only that but also, some of web2.0 tools such as RSS feeds could cause stoping users from visiting corporate website. Another drawback is about a tool like wiki that allow users to edit the content infinitely which affect the process of knowledge management. Finally, content reuse is possible action to be performing using web 2.0 technologies and this rise concern about the content ownership.

 I disagree with the point which was about the risk about using RSS feeds. In fact there is no danger, because the corporate website mainly used for customers, employs access the enterprise system to performer their daily work. Furthermore, regarding to the wiki issues, there is an amazing example about how collaborative editing using a wiki can be successful story; yes it is Wikipedia. Web 2.0 in organisation is a useful technology used for communication, collaboration, connection and knowledge sharing.

Popularity: 19% [?]

By fayez Alqahtani

Alex_Manchester twitted “54.2% of survey respondents say managing content on SharePoint collaboration sites is a ‘tremendous challenge” and this according to the IDC report issued in October about SharePoint. I asked him about the causes of this difficulties if it is organisational, technological or people issues. He replied “It’s all of those things. It’s the unmetered growth, the complete loss of control. Nobody is sure what to do!”. I think he is right, I read a Gartner report about how the adoption of a similar technology can be driven. The first and most important factor is the existence of the purpose. Whence the purpose of implementing share point is clear and underused by every on in the organisation this will help in avoiding this lose that Alex_Manchester was taking about. Also, this could help to resolve the employee’s resistance of using such technology which is more users oriented and with the user level of participations this technology could fail or success. As it has been reported by IDC in the same study saying “that only 22% of employees in the companies surveyed were actually using SharePoint”

Popularity: 11% [?]

Smart business Is the business that can be done on right way, on right path and on right time

Popularity: 14% [?]