Customers often ask how their collaboration systems and
procedures compare to others within the industry. That's always a difficult
assessment to make on the fly, and I often refer them back to the work done by
Sadalit Van Buren (@sadalit) a few years back around the SharePoint Maturity Model (SPMM), and more recently by Melinda Morales
(@trulyMelinda) at GTconsult around SharePoint governance and her Governance Maturity Model (and the corresponding free assessment survey).
With my focus in social collaboration, one other resource
which I recommend is the Enterprise
Social Collaboration Progression Model (June
2013) developed jointly by the University of Arizona Eller College of
Management and Microsoft. In this 23-page whitepaper, the authors do a great
job of outlining the maturity model for social collaboration in a way that very
much aligns with the SPMM. In fact, I’d love to see Sadie update her model,
maybe expanding her data with the output of this whitepaper to provide a more
holistic view over structured (SharePoint) and unstructured (social)
collaboration maturity.
The
University of Arizona and Microsoft team define their research as follows:
“This paper presents a progression model of the emerging social
collaboration paradigm to
determine current states and future plans for instituting social
collaboration strategies. The
framework is organized by six phases and an initial overview of
divisional/functional applications
of enterprise social collaboration. A CEO or CIO can use the model
as a general road map to
identify opportunities in entering or improving an organization's
use of social collaboration
technologies and methods to achieve greater communication
efficiencies.
The
progression model focuses on collaboration between employees, partners,
suppliers, and
consumers, but does not include topics such as social marketing, brand
awareness, sales, and non‐integrated
partners.”
The
authors define their 6 stages as:
- Basic, which is the use of
traditional communication tools, such as email and basic document sharing,
with limited infrastructure and informal (if any) processes in place.
- Standardized, where an organization has
taken the first steps toward adopting social tools and practices, although
not enterprise-wide.
- Rationalized, when an organization has
standardized and documented the social tools that are used and supported
across the company, with a defined strategy (or different strategies by
business unit) and functional goals.
- Dynamic –
Internal Integration, where an organization has linked their various social
strategies to an overall enterprise strategy, has developed some degree of
centralized oversight or management, and has begun to integrate social
activities and measurements into business processes and systems.
- Dynamic –
Holistic Integration, which involves internal and external integration of
software and services, revolving around a centralized internal platform
and high levels of customization to link social activities to specific
tools and business processes, as well as initiatives to drive adoption and
engagement (gamification).
- Dynamic –
Innovative, which
is the use of advanced social collaboration tools and techniques, beyond
what is available and is used in the mainstream, to drive the creation of
intellectual property and generate competitive advantage.
After defining the characteristics, prerequisites, obstacles and
impacts of each stage of their maturity model, the authors then go on to
provide some guidance on applying their model for sales and marketing teams,
product development, operations and distribution, customer support, and
business support. While this “Where Do I Begin?” content is a nice add, it
really just scrapes the surface of how a company should interpret their results
and move forward on a strategy. I made similar comments around Sadie’s work on
the SharePoint Maturity Model –
its a great method for measuring and tracking the maturity of your SharePoint
implementation, to help you better understand areas where you can improve and
optimize, but the model and its outputs do not equal a SharePoint strategy in
and of itself.
The
intent of measuring your social collaboration (or SharePoint) maturity should
be to get a more holistic view of where you are as an organization, and to
present your leadership team and key influencers with talking points for
improving and optimizing your strategy.
How
companies rate themselves can be somewhat subjective – but while this type of
maturity model can help normalize some definitions, how you define and execute
your strategy for moving to the next level (if that is part of your strategy)
might be very different from the strategies I apply within my organization. You
cannot optimize what you do not measure. Following a maturity model like this
is a great way to get started in your measurements, to draw a line in the sand,
and to begin to improve your social collaboration capabilities.