Seven Collaboration Tools:

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Explain why the considerations of time, place, richness, task, and adoption are important in selecting an appropriate collaboration tool.

The consideration of time, place, richness, task and adoption are important for selecting an appropriation tool. The reasons are that in a virtual team the expectations are that there will be an integration of the outputs of different team members, there will be concrete results and there will develop trusting relationship. The objectives of virtual teams are well defined and are very different from those who use common collaboration or networking tools. For example, 'collaborative blogs' are useful for social networking and the development of online communities. However, in a task environment where immediate and time bound brainstorming is required, planning, scheduling, tracking progress, presentations, online meetings and keeping secure records such a technology may not be the most appropriate. It may be argued, that blogs may be used for brainstorming. However, in virtual teams there are stringent boundaries of time that must be respected to get results. In virtual teams members are located in different time zones and coordination of time is difficult.

Issues related to place are important in case of collaboration tools. If there are inputs from different members, where will they be stored, where will they be secured? Immense efforts may be put in by virtual teams but if the output is misappropriated, the effort will go waste and maybe strengthen a competitor. Richness is important consideration for the work that is expected from a team member. For instance, if an advertising campaign is being prepared by a virtual team, it is important that there should be adequate richness that is conveyed to team members. Simply communicating in text is not adequate. The collaborative tool must support the required richness.

Consider the task requirements, it is important for each member to know and be assured that the input he has contributed will be used gainfully in the project. In addition, the team member should be able to 'see' how his contribution has added to the entire project. If the collaborative tool does not support such communication, it is inadequate. Further, the collaborative tool must be able to support brainstorming session. These may be held at the same time, the collaborative tool should support it. Virtual teams need to set objectives, set deadlines, monitor the progress of projects, assign responsibility to each member, set budgets, control the progress of the project and take rectification steps if there is any variation from the targets. A collaborative tool should support each of these collaborative tasks. The virtual team ...