Pål S. Malm
Telenor Research
and Development
P.O.Box 1156, N-9001 Tromsø
NORWAY
pal.malm@fou.telenor.no
Abstract
The Tromsø office of Telenor R&D has deployed groupware into different settings since we started the research programme on sector specific solutions in1987/88. Although, the settings may look different, the challenges of introducing the solutions have many things in common. In this paper I will point out some of the lessons learned from four of the sectors we have been studying.
I have been working in Telenor R&D since I finished my thesis on CSCW and Groupware in 1994. Part of the thesis was a compiled list of groupware prototypes and applications called "The unOfficial Yellow Pages of CSCW" a list now living its on life on the Internet. In my work at the Telenor R&D I have been involved in XXX different projects:
Telenor Research and Development started the Telemedicine project in Tromsø in 1988 and had the first field trial with a prototype for remote consultation during fall -88/89.
The project resulted in successful products in several medical fields (Nymo 1989). The products have remote diagnosis and consultation in common and most of them have groupware features coupled with medical tools like endoscopes, X-rays, computer tomographs, electro-microscopes etc. (Sund and Rinde 1995; Akselsen and Lillehaug 1993)
As part of the project the Tromsø -laboratory of Telenor R&D conducted a field trial investigating the use of IT to support political work. The field trial was sited in Salangen, a northern Norwegian rural municipality. 35 municipal politicians and their administration was given a PC with a modem and a prototype called POT (The POliticians' channel in the Telecommunications network). The system integrated e-mail, teleconferencing and electronic fax throug a user-friendly user interface and was demonstrated at CSCW'94 (Ytterstad et al 1996).
In the TIGER project, the object was to make knowledge and experiences of the elderly people accessible to society by means of telecommunications. Staying at home retired resource persons can join networks and thereby offer their knowledge. The network can simultaneously function as pleasant meeting points. The members of the pilot group was equipped with a PC and a simple solution for computer mediated communication.
In the virtual company-project we looked on how IT-solutions could help small and midsized companies grouping to compete with larger companies.
We developed a software system for supporting communication and information exchange between a geographically dispersed project-organisation called NNB (North Norwegian Bulding/contractor group). This system was based on POT, but involved a "virtual LAN" based on ISDN and a network file server.
Another system, made for a virtual company called NINE, was based on Lotus Notes and was made to support the process for making tenders to the offshore industry. Six different companies spread around the southern parts of Norway collaborated on the tender before it was submitted as an offer from one company, NINE.
The P3 processes has been developed to enhance Portfolio management, Product development, and Product administration in Telenor. During 1996 we have been facilitating the new processes in the different business units within the organisation at the same time as we have been testing a tool to assist in the task. The core of the tool is the electronic documentation of the processes and the project-database, a Lotus Notes application implementing the workflow and processes described in the documentation. The core-team of the project is using Lotus Notes while associate members of the project can read the project documents through their Web-browser and an addition to the Notes server called DOMINO.
The development team is distributed in three different cities of the country and is using video- and data-conferencing in addition to Notes and WWW in our work.
Next to oil, seafood or fish-products is the largest export product from Norway. Telenor R&D has been studying the sector and have been developing solutions in different settings. On of the solutions is a Lotus Notes/Web solution for a group of seafood exporting firms and the Norwegian Seafood Export Council.
The NETTO project, "Network Based Organization of Work", was started in 1996. The NETTO approach is to identify the major challenges corporations face in implementing these organization types and to verify how information and telecommunication technology can meet these challenges.
One of the cases involves making a tool for the the health service within Telenor. The health service involves ergonomics, working security, environmental issues within the office and is partly a service for the managers and partly a service to the employees. Like Telenor, the employees in the health service is scattered all over the country and needs a way to exchange information, and to document their activities in the different business units.
People opposing the deployment of the new tool often use substitute-arguments against the solution. They don't want to admit the actual reason for their resistance or subversive activities. In the Telemedicine project a group of doctors resisted a solution that would save money for the hospital and long distance travels by car for the doctors. The arguments they used was that the remote consultation system did not give a secure diagnose. The developers was working hard to make the remote consultation process more accurate when got to know that they would loose considerable amount in fares. In addition the journey by car represented a needed break from a busy day.
In the field trial with 35 municipal politicians using POT we first thought that the oldest members of the different political parties would represent the biggest challenge. On the contrary many of the old members saw the field trial as a unique opportunity to learn something usually seen as unapproachable for their generation. People in the party usually remote to the ongoing discussion in their political party because of geographical distance or daily work, used the technology as a way to make contact with the political dialogue. People in the inner circles did not need the system to get more information and suddenly realised that the new communication channel was weakening their influence. To admit this is hard so they used arguments like "The technology is to unstable" and "It is to hard to learn using it".
Sometimes, you think you have the deal with the right people and commitment from the management. Then, during the pilot or the deployment process you realise that there are others with power and influence with another agenda. They may agree on the main goals, but would have liked another supplier, different timetable, altered plans etc.
In the "virtual company-project" the a managing director had obliged to send members of his organisation on classes to learn basic use of Lotus Notes and for one local engineer, server maintenance. The problem was that the managers in charge the companies within the virtual company did not have time to prioritise the courses. Half way through the project the deployment was threatened because we failed to make an agreement with the right people. The solution was installed, but unstable through the period meant for pilot testing.
In the P3 project we some managers in business units within Telenor agreed on behalf of their project leaders to take part in the pilot testing of the P3-process tool. In product development in Telenor the project leaders have great influence on their working processes. Not everybody agreed on their managers arrangement .
The survey preceding the introduction may have given an idealised or designed picture of the organisation, its power channels and working procedures. Then, during deployment, the institutionalised and informal working routines does not fit the processes worked into the solution.
Telenor has long traditions in product development and the routines and knowledge on how "things should be done" has evolved through many years. P3 describes a completely new way to facilitate the product development process. One of our challenges is to merge the valuable experiences with the new processes. The tool have to implement the formal procedures, but also take into account the informal approaches to the working procedures.
Ytterstad, P, Akselsen, S, Svendsen, G B. 1994. Municipal Political Work in a Computer Supported Environment. Kjeller, Telenor Research and Development. (FoU-report R 38/94).
Nymo, B. 1989. Special Issue on Telemedicine. Telektronikk, 89(1) 42-47.
Akselsen, S, Lillehaug, S-I. 1993. Teaching and learning aspects of remote medical consultations. I: Proceedings of the IFIP TC3 International Conference : TELETEACHING 93, Trondheim. Red: G Davies and B Samways.
Malm, P.S. 1994. "CSCW and Groupware, a classification of CSCW-systems in a technological perspective" University of Tromsø, april 1994
Ytterstad et al (1996) "Teledemocracy: using information technology to enhance political work." MIS Quarterly Volume 20(3), 1996.
Sund, T. and Rinde, E. (1995). "Telemedicine: still waiting for users." The Lancet. Vol. 346, December 23/30, p.24.
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