Measuring Collaboration

Anybody who has experience in collaboration software or enterprise 2.0 knows that there is a endless demand for proof of value. However, as I gain more experience with consulting in the area, I’ve learned that this is really a red herring: the metrics people want don’t really exist. And almost always, people looking for metrics aren’t particularly interested in those that can be collected (largely participation-related metrics).  That’s not to say participation metrics aren’t important, they just don’t tell enough of a story to answer the mail (generally).

Everyone knows this: Collaboration in knowledge work is famously difficult to track and measure. Moreover, few organizations realize that they don’t know how well (or poorly) that they actually collaborate. Nor do they realize that social software offers a more effective and efficient means for collaboration: email works just fine if you don’t even think about how inefficient it is (though it seems like more effort is being expended to improve how we use email).

More Widgets vs. Better Widgets

There are generally two ways that collaboration can improve work: process improvements or quality improvements. It’s more widgets (or faster-produced widgets) or better widgets. More widgets improvements are generally easier to cataloged, for obvious reasons: producing a report in a week instead of two is easily quantifiable (assuming quality is held constant).

However, the improvements that people and managers generally want to see qualitative improvement, and the metrics to prove it. But how can you measure whether a knowledge output is 50 percent qualitatively better than a previous report. To make it worse, knowledge work is rarely repetitive enough that you can measure improvement without meticulous analytic review. And how difficult is it to get someone demanding metrics and proof that a new way of collaboration is worth the effort?

The Million Dollar Answer

So needless to say, if you can come up with a way to reliably “measure” collaboration, you will be rich indeed. In the meantime, the best tactic (in my experience) is being able to tell the story of collaboration, including more than just participation stats. Communications is important: you have to be able to tell the story. The who, when, and where are important; but it’s important to both be able to and have a means to tell the why, what, and how.