A lot of companies are highly interested in new technological possibilities stemming from Enterprise 2.0 tools. Currently the use of Enterprise 2.0 tools often has to be characterized as rather experimental. Decision-makers that are responsible for IT-landscapes in companies might wonder for what applications Enterprise 2.0 functionalities are well-suited and how they should be used. Additionally they might like to know what functionalities are of high importance to support the goals of their companies. Answering those questions is a non-trivial task, as Enterprise Collaboration Systems with Enterprise 2.0 functionalities offer many different ways for usage in collaboration scenarios. An answer may also be dependent on certain characteristics of a company (size, industry etc.).
The goal of a research project of the research group for Business Software at the University of Koblenz-Landau was thus to investigate how companies use Enterprise 2.0 tools in practice. Data for this investigation was gathered via the Enterprise 2.0 case study alliance, see Data Basis and Resources. An outcome of this research project is a catalogue for collaboration scenarios that aims to address the following questions:
- What kind of collaboration scenarios do exist in companies?
- What happens within these collaboration scenarios? What is a good way to visualize the characteristics of collaboration scenarios?
- What kind of collaborative features are applied in collaboration scenarios and what actions are performed with them?
- What kind of collaborative features and actions are frequently used in certain collaboration scenarios and which features and actions are only used rarely?
- Which collaboration scenarios are contained in which use-cases?
The catalogue of collaboration scenarios wants to provide useful information if companies are facing one of the following tasks:
- Determining requirements for a software solution to support collaboration scenarios that appear in a company.
- Identify best-practices with respect to the implementation of collaboration scenarios.
- Get an overview of the different possibilities that collaborative features provide.
- Find out how other companies use Enterprise Collaboration Systems.