A new face at MWD
Hello there, I'm Angela Ashenden, and I've recently joined Neil M and Neil WD to establish a new research area for MWD covering collaboration. I'm not new to the analyst world - you may have come across me in my previous role at Ovum, where I advised on many technology areas, including search, content management, portals, workflow and e-learning - so I have quite a background in this area!
At MWD, I will be coming at collaboration from a different perspective from most other analyst companies - but in line with MWD's broader strategy of IT-business alignment - taking the enterprise need as my primary consideration, rather than the technology. Of course technology is an important factor, but rather than simply drilling in on the individual features and functions of the tools available, I will be looking at the technology in as far as how it addresses the organisation's broader business need. Few organizations have the luxury of selecting new technology without taking into account their existing infrastructure and applications, and so I aim to keep the focus on how the technology fits within and complements that structure.
The other important consideration with collaboration is the practicality of changing people's ways of working; collaboration is not just about using a particular set of tools, it's about working together as a team, making best use of each person's skills, and taking responsibility both individually and collectively. I'll be looking at what makes collaboration work within an enterprise, and what techniques and methods you can use to implement collaborative working patterns within your organisation.
Interestingly, there are some strong relationships between collaboration and several of the existing competency areas within MWD (which of course is no accident!), and so the Neils and I will be exploring those too.
In the meantime, I will be posting comments and interesting links here on the blog regularly, so please feel free to offer your reactions to my musings!
Labels: collaboration, MWD
