Making the Collaboration Engineering Investment Decision

A well designed collaborative intervention (CI) can significantly improve group efficiency and effectiveness for many group processes. Appropriate guidelines are needed to help determine whether to invest in the design and implementation of a CI. This paper examines project and task criteria that are conducive to the successful development and implementation of CIs. Conducive project characteristics include the following: 1) clearly defined outcomes, 2) important but inefficient processes that are repeated multiple times, 3) projects that have appropriate task types, 4) projects whose participants have aligned goals, and 5) projects that have champions and adequate budgets. Although many tasks can benefit significantly from CIs, tasks with the following characteristics are especially well suited for CIs: they involve at least some synchronous work with a high degree of participant interaction; they require the processing of substantial information, especially when multiple collaborative patterns are required; and, they involve many participants.