Thoughts On
Collaboration:
I’m a
Product Manager in the data management group at SolidWorks, and I’ve been
thinking a lot lately about collaboration.
When I talk with customers about collaboration, it can seem so simple on the
surface: “I’m working on a project, and I need to involve someone else.” Easy,
right? Well… not really, no.
The thing is, ten people could utter those same words and mean ten different
things. Maybe the need is to keep a group of people working from the same,
up-to-date CAD data. Or it could be to get and manage feedback about a design
from a domain expert. Or the need may simply be to share a design with a
customer for their approval. The number of distinct needs that are forms of
“collaboration” can be staggering. But a common theme seems to be that
collaborating is hard – harder than it ought to be. To me, that says we have an
opportunity to make life easier for our customers.
In digging into the feedback we’ve received over years of customer visits, I’ve
found it really helpful to break down what I’ve heard into two categories,
based on the relationship that exists between the parties that need to work
together:
• Is the
collaborator a trusted “insider?”
• Or are they an “outsider” with whom only so much can be shared?
For customers working with trusted “insiders,” we can apply one set of
assumptions about how close those users can be to your design data, and can
think about collaboration capabilities delivered inside of the design tools. But
for situations where you’re working with “outsiders,” we need to assume you
want greater protection of your intellectual property, and provide
collaboration capabilities that are more about selective sharing and
discussions than close cooperation.
There are plenty of other factors we’ll need to consider too, of course. For
example, what are the technical backgrounds and skills of the different groups
of collaborators? And what are the most effective means of capturing and
managing feedback from a few or even many participants? And how can I make the
collaboration process more social – increasing the number voices in my
organization that I’ll hear from, and providing greater visibility to the
challenges that exist within a project? But understanding the relationships
that exists between collaborators is crucial to getting collaborative
capabilities right.
I’ve introduced this topic because I’m interested in making sure we provide
great collaboration capabilities. Do you think of your collaboration needs this
way? Are there people you trust a little bit and people you trust a lot, and do
you want to work differently with one set vs. the other? I’d love to hear your
thoughts, and I’ll look forward to sharing more as I dig into specific customer
needs in this area.
John
Ellsworth on October 07, 2011 at 01:20 PM in Collaboration,Community, Product Data
Anthony
Hamilton's Comments
Collaboration
..... by this John you are referring to an engineering team working on a
project?
Electrical, Mechanical and structural designers possibly with each have their
own distinct area of responsibility.
A prospective we approach collaborative design with is very much the same way
where each team member has their own scope of works along with ownership of the
project, everyone is an insider with their own specific technical expertise.
This can be broken down into similar areas with regard to 3D modeling Top down
modelers working in harmony with bottom up modelers.
We don’t have outsiders in a football team and neither should your work team.
Anthony Hamilton
Hamilton By Design | SolidWorks
Engineering | Drafting | Laser Scanning
