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Panel: The Challenge for Complex Organizations: Making Sense of Organizational Requirements

Abstract: A multitude of requirements are needed in an organization to support collaboration, depending on whether it occurs at the team, or organizational level. Small teams that are collocated can coordinate their activities fairly easily through oral communication. Large distributed organizations, however, use a management hierarchy to disseminate communication and collect data for coordination, or they use asynchronous communication media such as email. Organizations expend great energy and resources to coordinate their activities, investing in various kinds of technologies. The organization may also use document management and workflow tools that have little value to a small group. Project teams face a dilemma: they are typically small groups operating within an organizational context, and they collaborate in both contexts concurrently. Management tends to think about the organizational requirements, whereas the team workers focus on the group requirements. This panel will discuss how organizations face difficulties in merging their multiple requirements to understand their needs for collaboration support.

Moderator: Gloria Mark, ISR / UC Irvine

Panelists:

• Mark Ackerman, ISR / University of Michigan
• Erin Bradner, ISR / UC Irvine
• Paul Dourish, ISR / UC Irvine
• Steve Poltrock, Technical Fellow, Boeing Phantom Works

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