Douglas L. Dean

Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a More Comprehensive Theory

This paper extends previous research by proposing a model that can help explain ways to motivate member contributions to online communities (OCs). New features in the model will allow researchers to test the relative effects of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards as motivators in OCs. Some OCs have introduced extrinsic re-enforcements like gifts, social recognition, and feedback to entice their community members to contribute. However, some research in non-OC settings has suggested that extrinsic rewards can be detrimental to intrinsic motivation. The new model presents findings from organizational behavior and psychology literature that suggest extrinsic rewards can increase a persons intrinsic motivation under some conditions.

Marketplace and technology standards for B2B e-commerce: progress, challenges, and the state of the art

We have examined standards required for successful e-commerce (EC) architectures and evaluated the strengths and limitations of current systems that have been developed to support EC. We find that there is an unfilled need for systems that can reliably locate buyers and sellers in electronic marketplaces and also facilitate automated transactions. The notion of a ubiquitous network where loosely coupled buyers and sellers can reliably find each other in real time, evaluate products, negotiate prices, and conduct transactions is not adequately supported by current systems. These findings were based on an analysis of mainline EC architectures: EDI, company Websites, B2B hubs, e-Procurement systems, and Web Services. Limitations of each architecture were identified. Particular attention was given to the strengths and weaknesses of the Web Services architecture, since it may overcome some limitations of the other approaches.

Technological support for group process modeling

During business analysis, business activities are modeled and analyzed. Redefined models become the blueprints for improved business activities. The cost to produce models of the organization is high and model accuracy is important. Involvement from knowledgeable participants and stakeholders is desirable during business modeling and analysis. Traditional modeling approaches limit direct participation to a small handful of participants. This paper discusses the development and evaluation of an electronic meeting system (EMS) based activity modeling tool. Modeling efforts supported by this new approach are compared with modeling efforts supported by analysts with a single-user tool. The results of this comparison reveal that the EMS-based modeling tool allows a greater number of individuals to participate efficiently in model development. Models are developed between 175 percent and 251 percent faster with the new approach than with the traditional approach. Specific features are discussed that help relatively novice modelers work with analysts to develop models of reasonable quality. Measures are set forth that can be used to assess modeling efficiency and quality.

Enabling the effective involvement of multiple users: methods and tools for collaborative software engineering

The paper presents results of ongoing research to support effective user involvement during systems development projects. The Collaborative Software Engineering Methodology is presented as a framework that contains mechanisms to support three layers of user involvement: selected user representatives, user groups, and the broader user community. Productivity and user participation of traditional group meetings have been limited by chauffeured facilitation and by support of single-user tools designed for analysts rather than users. The paper introduces electronic meeting systems (EMS) modeling tools designed to allow users to work in parallel to contribute directly during meetings. These tools are easy to use while containing support features traditionally associated with CASE tools. The methodology includes a sequence of requirements abstractions that users engage directly including activity models, data models, scenarios, system use cases, and prototypes. This methodology is designed to help organizations respond to todays rapidly changing information processing needs.

An Examination of the Impact of Stimuli Type and GSS Structure on Creativity: Brainstorming Versus Non-Brainstorming Techniques in a GSS Environment

Of the techniques available for idea generation with group support systems (GSS), little research attention has been given to techniques that challenge problem assumptions or that use unrelated stimuli to promote creativity. When implementing such techniques with GSS, choices must be made regarding how to configure the GSS to deploy the initial creative stimuli and to present the pool of emerging ideas that act as additional stimuli. This paper reports the results of an experiment that compares Electronic Brainstorming (few unnamed rotating dialogues) with Assumption Reversals (many related stimuli, many named dialogues, free movement among dialogues) and Analogies (many unrelated stimuli, many named dialogues, free movement among dialogues). Analogies produced creative, but fewer, ideas, due to the use of unrelated stimuli. Assumption Reversals produced the most, but less creative, ideas, possibly due to fragmentation of the group memory and cognitive inertia caused by lack of forced movement among dialogues.

Facilitation Methods for Collaborative Modeling Tools

This paper presents results of an ongoing research effort to support effective user involvement during modeling and analysis meetings. Productivity and user participation of traditional group meetings have been limitations imposed by chauffeured facilitation and single-user tools. These tools have been designed for analysts rather than for direct use by non-analyst users. Recently, electronic meeting systems (EMS) modeling tools that allow users to work in parallel to contribute directly during meetings have been developed. Such tools allow more domain experts to participate directly and productively during model development meetings than is possible using the traditional approach. Although previous research has demonstrated that EMS modeling tools may be used to develop some model content, little research had been done on collaborative facilitation methods that employ these tools. This paper presents a comparison of modeling approaches for use with EMS modeling tools and proposes an approach that overcomes significant problems inherent in other approaches. It leverages the productivity enhancement afforded by direct group access and still results in production of complete, integrated, high quality models. This approach allows models to be developed two to four times faster than with traditional modeling support and yet avoids model ambiguities and inconsistencies.

Assessing the Quality of Collaborative Processes

Use of effective and efficient collaboration is important for organizations to survive and thrive in today’s competitive world. This paper presents quality constructs that can be used to evaluate the success of a collaboration process. Two types of collaboration processes are identified: 1) processes that are designed and executed by the same facilitator who designed them, and 2) processes that are designed by a collaboration engineer and executed many times by practitioners. Accordingly, the quality constructs have been divided in two categories. Constructs within the first category apply to both types of collaboration processes. This category includes constructs such as process effectiveness and efficiency, results quantity, results quality, satisfaction, and usability. The second category contains constructs that are useful from the perspective of the collaboration engineering approach: repeatable collaboration processes executed by practitioners. The three constructs important for this perspective are reusability, predictability, and transferability.

Improving group creativity: brainstorming versus non-brainstorming techniques in a GSS environment

Creativity is increasingly important in todays fast changing world. The use of group support systems has been shown to improve the quantity and quality of ideas produced by groups during idea generation. Similarly, creative techniques may be used to increase creativity. Therefore, the use of creative techniques together with a GSS may help groups think more creatively. Brainstorming is the most used and studied of the techniques. However, to further increase creativity, other types of creative techniques may be used. This paper presents a theory addressing structural aspects of both creative techniques and GSS, including testable hypotheses. A laboratory experiment is described that tests these hypotheses for three creative techniques (brainstorming, assumption reversals and analogies) implemented using a GSS. Results support the proposed theory. Analogies produced fewer but more creative ideas. Assumption reversals produced the most ideas, but these ideas were less creative than ideas produced by analogies and brainstorming.

Making the Collaboration Engineering Investment Decision

A well designed collaborative intervention (CI) can significantly improve group efficiency and effectiveness for many group processes. Appropriate guidelines are needed to help determine whether to invest in the design and implementation of a CI. This paper examines project and task criteria that are conducive to the successful development and implementation of CIs. Conducive project characteristics include the following: 1) clearly defined outcomes, 2) important but inefficient processes that are repeated multiple times, 3) projects that have appropriate task types, 4) projects whose participants have aligned goals, and 5) projects that have champions and adequate budgets. Although many tasks can benefit significantly from CIs, tasks with the following characteristics are especially well suited for CIs: they involve at least some synchronous work with a high degree of participant interaction; they require the processing of substantial information, especially when multiple collaborative patterns are required; and, they involve many participants.

A Collaborative Software Code Inspection: The Design and Evaluation of a Repeatable Collaboration Process in the Field

The use of software products in todays world has increased dramatically making quality an important aspect of software development. There is a continuous need to develop processes to control and increase software quality. Software code inspection is one way to pursue this goal. This paper presents a collaborative code inspection process that was designed during an action research study using Collaboration Engineering principles and techniques. Our inspection process was implemented as a sequence of thinkLets, chunks of facilitation skill, that were subsequently field tested in a traditional paper-based and Group Support System (GSS)-based environment. Four inspections were performed on four different pieces of software code in two different organizations. Results show that regardless of the implementation, the process was found to be successful in uncovering many major, minor, and false-positive defects in inspected pieces of code. Overall observations and feedback suggest that the collaborative inspection process was considered to be productive and satisfactory. GSS inspections were more effective, especially in terms of major defects. GSS inspections were also found to be more efficient. Finally, the GSS inspections outperformed the paper inspections from a practical perspective: logging and managing defects in a GSS was far superior.