Sociometry of Collaborative Desktop Use

This is a short extact of my book (the English version will be available soon) - Section 5.3 from Chapter 5. It introduces the topic of measuremment of desktop software. Since most of desktop software is geared towards collaborative work nowdays, it is a first contribution towards Enterprise Collaboration Sociometry.

This set of principles and goals, which start to shape what looks like an ambition, leads us once more to the measurement issue. Whether it is a question of individual or collective efficiency[1], defining performance indicators is not easy. However, even if they are far from perfect, measuring those indicators has many advantages. They provide some objectivity to the debate about the improvement or the stagnation of desktop tools. They support the evaluation of usage and empowerment of these tools. Last, they enable us to address the issue of – and most often the worries associated with – collective impact (i.e., how does the individual usage of a tool change the way we work together as a group). Andrew Petersen’s complaints in the case study may be seen as an illustration of negative consequences, from a collective point of view, of misguided individual practices.
The following table is a first contribution to this measurement topic. It suggests indicators which are clearly defined and independent from the tools (such as measuring the size of a Word™ or Powerpoint™ document).

1. Measuring Time
   
   Producing a Document: Daily time percentage spent to produce documents
   Electronic Mail: Time spent to read one’s emails
   Average waiting time of a message (before it is read)
   Meeting Attendance: Percentage of weekly time spent in scheduled meeting
   KM Contribution: Percentage of time spent to contribute to knowledge management
   
2. Measuring Result
   
   Producing a Document: Number of documents
   Total amount of characters produced in a month
   Electronic Mail: Total generated traffic (email size X number of receivers)
   Average size of incoming mailbox
   Meeting Attendance: Global volume (man.month) of meetings to which I participate
   KM Contribution: Number of KM contributions (documents, forums, …)
   
3. Measuring Collboration (collective dimension)
   
   Producing a Document: Reading rate of produced documents
   Average number of readers
   Electronic Mail: Average number of receivers
   Direct versus copy (cc) distribution
   Meeting Attendance: Average number of attendees
   Percentage of meetings that I call myself as the organizer
   KM Contribution: Average number of readers
   Average number of reuse / quotation per contribution
   

It is difficult to collect these metrics for the whole set of employees, on a continuous basis. On the other hand, it is possible to proceed with experiments or to hire an outside company to take measurements. This is very similar to the chrono-analysis studies that have been ordered in the industry for decades, either in a workshop or on construction site. The relentless search for improved efficiency makes me conjecture that, as part of this new phase of the service industry transformation, communication and information transformation activities will be monitored and analyzed more closely in the future.
There already exist a number of results that are directly relevant to understand how to increase global efficiency. For instance, we know a fair amount about reading, writing and listening speed, which may be measured using a words-per-minutes count. To keep things simples, an employee writes (when he produces a document on his desktop computer or when he writes a mail) at an average speed of 30 words per minutes. This is 5 times slower than when he speaks (speech speed varies considerably amongst individuals, but 150 words/minute is a proper order of magnitude[2]). This explains why it is more efficient, time-wise, to give a phone call than to send an email, as long as the receiving party is available.
On the other hand, from the receiving side, the same user may read approximately 300 words per minutes, using a quick reading approach but without mastering special reading skills. Besides, he may parse a document even faster (searching for keywords) to judge the interest of a document. Hence it is more pleasant and more efficient to browse through one’s email than one’s voice mail. Choosing and optimizing a communication channel is not simply a matter of throughput. The quality of the information exchange also depends on the ability to establish a “feedback look”, which enables the sender to modulate her or his message (the “bandwidth concept”) [3].

[1] The « sociometry » term is borrowed from J.-L. Moreno – cf. his book, Who Shall Survive: Foundations of Sociometry, Group Psychotherapy and Sociodramas – to emphasize the collective dimension. What we need to measure is the contribution to performance that is produced by the whole network, not simply how the individual efficiency is improved. We could equally qualify our fictional cases as “sociodramas”, with the meaning proposed by J.-L. Moreno (in the same book). The link with sociometry was already apparent in the previous chapter (and this will become even more evident with the second annex) since we tried to qualify the interaction networks within the company, such as the corporate meeting system.
[2] This is a simplified summary. There exists a fascinating literature about this topic. To find a more detailed summary with a bibliography, see: http://www.keller.com/articles/readingspeed.html.
[3] For further thoughts about this question, read « Beyond Bandwidth: Dimensions of Connection in Interpersonal Communication » from B. Nardi, in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (2005), vol. 14, Springer. The term « bandwidth » covers both the ability to transfer information as well as the handling of feedback. Feedback may be explicit (such as a two-way conversation, assuming a low latency) or implicit (weak signals that are contained in facial expressions or body language). This brilliant article deals with three relational aspects of communication: affinity, engagement and attention. It proposes a few suggestions about the use of technology as a communication support and emphasizes the importance of body language.