Gang of Eight

Every collaboration is different, but Gartner and third-party research reveal that eight consistent conditions must be present for a successful dynamic collaboration. Three are about choosing the right collaboration, and five are about executing well on the collaboration.

Choosing the right collaboration:

1. Opportunity. External collaboration is hard, so there must be an opportunity that the key stakeholders in each enterprise really believe in, and believe is only reachable through external collaboration.

2. Capabilities. Partners must exist that together have the required capabilities to deliver on the opportunity.

3. Goals. Participants must agree on goals that align and motivate all enterprises and individuals involved. Compared to a normal project, successful collaborations spend much more of the total project time on this.

Executing the collaboration well:

4. Leadership. Since there is more than one enterprise involved, leadership happens less naturally. Sponsors must demonstrate very active leadership, through decision making, communication and how they use their time.

5. Trust. Leaders must work hard to maintain trust through openness and actively listening to and addressing concerns of participants in a timely fashion.

6. Roles. The most successful collaborations establish very clear roles. In operational collaborations, choosing the steering group members, alpha and beta pilot participants, and later participants is critical. In knowledge collaborations, defining and supporting moderators, experts, members, and passive subscribers can lead to higher quality. Also, in knowledge collaboration, compartmentalizing participants into sub-domains ensures that knowledge transfer is focused on value, as opposed to general discussion.

7. Tools. To succeed, collaborations need high-quality tools. Some tool characteristics are important for every collaboration — for example, ease of use, granular security and integrity considerations — but different initiatives require different tools.

8. Adaptation. No one is smart enough to envisage exactly how a collaboration will evolve. Unexpected obstacles arise, as do opportunities. Hence, the process and the tools must be adaptable over time. This also helps to keep participants engaged.

Three types of tools are key to enabling virtual working across enterprise boundaries:

• Coordination tools, such as project management, calendaring and workflow
• Communication tools, including e-mail, instant messaging, audio, video and Web conferencing
• Shared workspaces, including file- and content-sharing mechanisms, blogs and bulletin boards, wikis, team decision-support tools and tools for locating expertise