A quick overview of the top 4 typical areas where project ownership lands and what risks/benefits apply to each (in my experience). Note we’re talking typical here 
There’s always the social visionary in HR, or the highly business-oriented Director of IT as an exception to the rule!
- IT - The business is hollering for social technology. They might even be planning a revolution involving a server under someone’s desk and an opensource technology. IT says “whoa, Nelly! we can’t just pick the prettiest, shiniest thing here folks!” Risks: IT has been known to select tools that fulfill a 60 page RFP , but don’t operate functionally for the majority of the business (eg SharePoint, Confluence). If the application doesn’t work for the end-users, it will be under-utilized. Benefits: IT know their world and know when applications aren’t well suited to provide additional value to that environment (eg the only Java app in a .Net shop) Recommendation: Cross-functional Business team and IT work together to set up a task force and make sure the interests of the majority are represented.
- HR/Corp Communications own the Project – but they don’t drink the Kool-Aid. Seeing their users set up their own Facebook groups to collaborate with one another gives HR hives, but they aren’t sold on this internal free-for-all. They want governance, and fast. Risks: HR have a reputation for being too heavy-handed with employee generated content creation rules, and can stifle or kill a social site with moderation/rules. Benefits: Nobody is likely to get sued if HR are in charge. Recommendation: More conservative organizations than yours have done this. Ask your late-stage vendors to connect your teams with like implementations (size, scope and industry if possible) and understand how they have been successful and any negatives they have experienced, and how they combated them. First-hand is always best.
- The “Business” - For the purposes of this blog, I’m using “business” in place of Department (Marketing, Sales, etc) or internal silo (Retail, Wholesale, Media, etc). The group/horizontal entity within an organization has identified a need for their teams to better collaborate, and actively pursues an application that can serve those needs. Risks: Business selects a vendor that services only their specific requirements. Often, these decisions are based not on the validity of the application for the Enterprise, and may ultimately exclude them from the larger conversation. Benefits: The team in question acquires a product that (in theory!) matches their particular use case. Recommendation: Many organizations are large enough that providing different applications to service each group’s needs is virtually unavoidable. If you are going the path less traveled, at bare minimum make sure that your application of choice can be leveraged as a platform and is accessible to other applications within the Enterprise environment via RSS or a rich Web Services API.
- Executives own the project. In flight magazine/CIO magazine is preaching the benefits of Social Technology behind the firewall. One Executive decides this is the next big thing, and picks one (or more) of the above groups to go out and buy some Enterprise 2.0. I have seen this decision making process boil down to an Exec opening his office door and saying: “Who has a Facebook, raise your hand? Ok, you, you and you – you’re on this project”. Risks: The Exec in question may not necessarily understand this technology (and the differences between vendors) very well. They may also be unreasonably enamored with an incumbent provider (IBM, Oracle, Msoft etc) Benefits: it is difficult to win Executive sponsorship for these initiatives at times, and having someone high up the food chain who is willing to go to bat for the application to be open, conversational and truly collaborative is a huge win. Also, if they are willing to be Pilot bloggers and put themselves out there somewhat, they truly can lead by example. Recommendations: Ensure that the Execs are being consulted along the way and are involved in demos, Proof of Concept phase, etc. Leverage Analyst White Papers etc. to make sure they feel comfortable with a best of breed vendor selection process (Forrester/Gartner both did excellent studies in ‘08, for example)
In short, I think all of the above groups can successfully select, deploy, manage and administer social technology. It’s good however to be mindful of the nature of community, what your organizational challenges are and how to best serve those challenges for the long haul. Best practices guidance for your specific needs and challenges should be something a top tier vendor is able to help with, and collaborating with your peers for help is, well, just like sipping your own champagne, now isn’t it?
I love it… I love it…
It feels like you came to my workplace and took a set of picture and summarized these in this post…
Sole issue: I still don’t know who owns Enterprise 2.0 software in my company!
Ha ha! Good point – that should have been:
#5 “When nobody knows who owns internal collaboration” Risks: Proliferation of tools ad-hoc in every business unit. Benefits: Nobody ends their career by spending $5M on an Enterprise application that nobody uses! Recommendation: work with all of the above groups to establish some ownership (even if it is that everyone owns it!)
So are you seeing titles for enterprise 2.0? In IT? or other organizations?
Not specifically. In most instances for any kind of sizable initiative, it’s Director level and above across the first three groups. As referenced above, Executive involvement/sponsorship can happen at the ground level. Less likely. More often than not, one Dept. or other is leading the charge from their perspective and hoping to get their needs answered and the solution in place before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon.
well put Sarah…all depts should have some ownership!
Sarah,
Well put. In fact the zeroth case is that no one owns it, and that’s the worst of all. I agree with your recommendations, and would add that success comes with multiple stakeholders. One trick is to first pilot the E2.0 initiative with groups that you want to have on board. So if you are running this out of IT, then pilot this with the HR group. If you are getting pressed on ROI issues, then target the first pilot with the finance group. This will give you a broader range of support as you evolve the initiative.
I also agree that the analyst firms did a great job of publishing reports on this topic
. I’d highly recommend reading them and reaching out to the authors of those reports.
BTW, I just blogged a similar post here http://www.gilyehuda.com/2009/03/03/team-collaboration/
Thanks, Gil – I enjoyed reading your post on this subject as well and would recommend it to interested parties. Definitely by the time we speak with prospective customers, they may not have determined “ownership” but someone is stepping up to the plate to head the charge… whether or not it’s really even in their realm of expertise/position!
Good stuff. The problem we’re seeing is multiple owners, many interested parties, and multiple motives. The HR ownership section is poignant, and one of my bigger concerns. Having deployed collaboration sites under HR and other guidance, there is a lot of paranoia over the what-ifs.
My feeling is that people in communities are pretty good at self governing. In a corporation, you’ll see about as many inappropriate posts as you see face tattoos.
The similar governance concern that I have concerns IP. Do you have any thoughts on how to manage that? Designs, marketing, etc?
I like the face tattoo analogy…another good one I might have to steal from you!
Intellectual property in these applications is somewhat of a similar topic for Legal to wrap their heads around. Today designs/documents are being worked on in an iterative process facilitated by some kind of technology. Getting around copy/paste/send isn’t as much about what technology is surfacing that content and allowing it to be manipulated. It’s about terms and conditions that compliment your business model and concerns and will give you the ability to act accordingly should anyone violate the Ts and Cs. I imagine most corporations with IP concerns today implement employee agreements and contracts with protection of those assets as a priority. Once you get Legal to accept that Ent. 2.0 is exactly the same as Email (or talking to a friend who works for a competitor about a new product launch) and warrants the same concerns, but no new ones, you’re a long way down the path to making them feel comfortable. Hope that helps!
Part of what we went through in our analysis is that (a) someone needed to own it, (b) there were no logical choices, so (c) we had to create a new function.
I wonder how many organizations will need to do the same?
– Chuck
Agreed, Chuck – I think many organizations will do the same once this technology is more of a standard practice. Tech is at the leading edge still in developing social business software strategy and implementing best practices deployments. I am glad to hear things are going well at EMC – I was your AM a couple of years back (worked with Randy Boutin and others on external communities) before the internal initiative. Thanks for the comment and your excellent white paper covering EMC’s discovery process in social media – link below for interested parties!
http://chucksblog.emc.com/a_journey_in_social_media/2008/12/giving-back-and-a-request-for-help.html
What a great realistic post about the ownership/deployment of these tools.
I agree with Chuck, a special taskforce needs to be setup, perhaps an existing knowledge management team to take this on.
Information Management is all about understanding the information flows in the organisation, and further to this the KM team often go to the granular level of working with different team dynamics to help them share (network), communicate, collaborate, learn, be aware.
This puts KM in a good position in understanding all the different needs and use cases from various departments/teams. They would also hopefully be aware of the IT rogues who are already using these tools.
IT usually have the security/risk/cost agenda (one size fits all)…what we need is a line of business leading, but of course have an IT person on the team.
http://www.headshift.com/blog/2008/09/the-enterprise-social-computin-1.php
http://michaeli.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/03/enterprise-adop.html
A department like Marketing will have their agenda or come from a narrow angle, and Top Exec’s may not understand what it’s all about (all they know is it’s in vogue)
I think KM or a new team that has a neutral agenda or holistic view is better.
But this is not always possible, hence your post on choosing the lesser evil, and to be aware of the weakness of your choice.
Again, great post
Just found another relevant article
IT vs Operator/Exec vs Social computing culture
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/rawn?entry=it_vs_operator_exec_vs
Until I got to John Tropea’s comment, I was concerned that nobody considered this to be a knowledge management responsibility. That is where social software is being driven in my organisation, and (I think, although obviously I am biased) this is right.
For me, it comes down to the purpose of these tools. What are they being used for? They aren’t being used to make the network run faster, so IT shouldn’t own them). They aren’t being used to improve people management, so HR shouldn’t own them. They aren’t being used for revenue control, so Finance shouldn’t own them. They aren’t being used (internally, at least) to generate new business, so Sales & Marketing shouldn’t won them.
They are being used to improve knowledge sharing, information flows and personal learning. In my organisation, this means that they are owned by the Knowledge & Learning team. Yes, IT, HR, and all the others have an interest, but their interests should be secondary.
Interesting, Mark and John. I really appreciate your thoughts here. The KM side of the house I heard more frequently a couple of years ago, when Knowledge Base etc. were more popular product. Since the “social revolution” I’m currently hearing pretty much exclusively from the four areas identified about (note I’m talking US companies here, which might make a difference?) Anyone else seeing KM ownership organizationally?
[...] Social Software? Sarah Denman writes about social software and recently posted an article about why you should care about who owns the social networking software in your enterprise. She makes the case that there are unique challenges depending on which department or business [...]
The learning or training is missing from the list ?!
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Thanks, elearning. HR in my experience has traditionally encompassed learning and training, and while not explicitly called out in the blog, that was my assumption.
[...] Where are the vendors in all this? They are talking to the departments, of course, trying to sell each one on their solution. And I don’t blame them either. They have to make the sale, and it’s impossible to get IT to agree on the plan. Anyway, it’s not at all clear that IT is the right group to run the E2.0 initiative anyway? Is it? [...]
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