Summary:
The paper published in 1994 by Jonathan Grudin, Talks about the advent of groupware in the society. It talks about a time when the groupware wasn’t a norm and the challenges developers face while developing groupware. The acceptance of groupware so low that, success of groupware was unheard of. The paper came out with a metric of challenges that a developer faces while developing groupware. Developers had to keep many things in mind while developing groupware. They had to be aware of certain challenges such as Disparity in work and benefit, it may not appeal to all users or may fail because it doesn’t appeal a single user, may cause disruption of social process, exception handling on wide range such as a group may not be possible, unobstructed accessibility for heavily used features rather than rarely used ones, difficulty of evaluation, failure to be intuitive and so on. Probably the biggest challenge of groupware is adoption of the process. People weren’t able to get adopted to something they are not familiar with, and groupware is exactly that. The paper made contrast of the problems with single-user programs and organization IS. The paper mentions the successful groupware that were successful even during that time such as email, database system, code repository. They also tried to come with solutions that’d help people to get used to groupware.
Reflection:
Even though the paper takes place in 1994, many of the aspects still hold true to this date. Even though groupware is a norm these days, many people still have trouble to work on groupware. Most of the time, the older generation, who are more attuned to the technology of their time, have the most trouble getting used to groupware. Even though the paper mentions email as a successful groupware from that time, to this date, people aren’t able to utilize email all the time. If I ask my mother to email me something, she will struggle with it. Because she is more accustomed to physical mail system in the first place. The solutions mentioned in the paper may be useful for many people, but most of the time, people have to be willing to change or adopt, otherwise any effort put into them trying out the new groupware technology is fruitless. We also see unwillingness to use certain groupware or having trouble to use one in a certain group of people, because they are used to a different groupware that does similar tasks. For example, if someone is used to working on github as a code repository, they may have trouble working on bitbucket suddenly, because of the difference of the interface. So, in the end, it all comes down to a person’s will to adapt.
