Essay on Groupware

The BART System of Group was establish to edify the practitioner observation and abilities toward facilitating groups within the followings characteristics Boundary, Authority, Role and Task. This would enhanced the practitioner overall approach with providing the effective structure for the group and individuals to attain success with accomplishing their objectives.

In my opinion, group work is a type of cooperative learning that helps people to accomplish a certain task in a faster and more effective manner. Team working also helps to achieve the tasks that are impossible to finish by one individual. However, if people in a group have a lot of conflicts, group work will not be able to achieve as much as we expected. There are many reasons which lead to dissatisfaction in group work such as individualism as well as conflicts in opinion and time.

This can cause problems for the company with the loss of potentially critical information that was needed for a project. As you can see there are many problems that can unravel just from using groupware. These problems are extreme but a good example is myself at work. I work for the Navy in a hospital for a basic training for the Marine Corps. We use groupware as a form for a follow-up log to determine which patients need to come back and on which day for their personal safety. Anyone that works in the hospital has access to this log. If someone was to go into it and delete the information it becomes potentially dangerous for the people involved in being erased if we cannot have them come back in. Luckily this does not happen, however not everybody likes the system and they do not implement the peoples name into the system. This can cause the superiors to get upset when it is not up to date than someone gets in trouble causing more work for everyone else in the clinic. It also reduces the morale of all the workers that do remember to add the names but now have to work harder because someone did not do their job. Even with all of these challenges it allows us to be more effective as a clinic and our efficiency is better with a lot less people being missed in coming in for a follow-up.

”For example in a campus environment, professors working on the same project can send broadcast messages to one another without the necessity of belonging to the same department. This can reduce traffic if the multicasting capability of IP was previously used”[2]. The concept of Virtual work groups seems to be a good one in theory but in practice this does not work properly.

A collaboration tool that I believe would fulfill our needs at The Broadway Café would be a Groupware System. Groupware is

| Employees in geographically dispersed locations can work together in virtual teams using video, e-mail, and the Internet.

Throughout life there are many instances in which an individual has to work in a group to complete a task/project. The importance of group work is to have teamwork with each member of the group. Humans are driven to connect with each other and by working as a group ideas become much more enriched and the ideas or thoughts that each person ‘brings to the table’ each individual is able to add onto that idea or it can trigger one to think of something completely different.

These groups rely on technology to communicate with one another and to accomplish the tasks allocated by the organization. One benefit of a virtual team is that they use technology and this can help increase efficiency and productivity of the members. The virtual teams also assist in the development of intellectual capital. The composition of the virtual groups helps improve quality as well as the outcome. The other benefit is the efficiency of communication. Some of the challenges include the distance between the members. The significant distance may dilute leadership, weaken human relations as well as amplify dysfunction. Virtual teams are hard to manage especially when it comes to goal setting, task distribution, coordination and member motivation. Virtual organizations rely on trust that the other members will fulfill their roles since it is not possible to monitor them closely (Hoppe, 2011). The virtual teams may face some internet challenges such as slow internet or disconnection. This problem can be handled through the use of alternative methods of communication such as mobile phones. While making a virtual team, the team members should address all challenges which may hinder communication by coming up with all possible substitutes of means of communication. These organizations rely heavily on the internet for video conferencing and sending emails. However, when the internet fails, they

Different groups within the company can have webcast session with other across the country in order to brainstorm, manage projects, or simply share best practices.

Virtual Team on the other hand is a group of people working across time, space, and organizational boundaries which communication links are strengthened by the internet. It should be noted that virtual teams can also mean individuals spread across different cultures and languages. (“Virtual Team - Origin, Definition and its Scope,” 2016). More so, this team of geographically dispersed professionals working together as a unit despite distance are committed to achieving a single objective, holding one another mutually accountable.

Asynchronous tools enable communication and collaboration over a period of time through a "different time-different place" mode. These tools allow people to connect together at each person's own convenience and own schedule. Asynchronous tools are useful for sustaining dialogue and collaboration over a period of time and providing people with resources and information that are instantly accessible, day or night. Asynchronous tools possess the advantage of being able to involve people from multiple time zones. In addition, asynchronous tools are helpful in capturing the history of the interactions of a group, allowing for collective knowledge to be more easily shared and distributed. The primary drawback of asynchronous technologies is that

Although each product group has its own particular needs and programing requirements, the divisions of each group should be working with the same programming and technology system.

I agree with Alana, concerning time, and how it may have an impact on low/high contact group development. In addition, low/high contact culture interaction may have an impact in the participant’s status difference, trust, value, and communication. In the event of considering that the group member’s vital source of communication is via internet, this will have an effect on the time messages are submitted or received. Trust, in the virtual environment, is similar to a statue wearing a blindfold, while hoping that your partners will be reliable and dependable. The status of a group member is irreverent, (in the online groups I have participated in), last but not least, a person patterns assisted me with recognizing a classmates’

Some members have careers that demands their time during the day and since we are all in college, some also have classes during the night. To counteract this challenge, our group decided to communicate with one another using Groupme. This way, no matter how busy each member is, we can all stay connected to achieve the goal of the group. Although we cannot meet face-to-face, Google Docs affords us the opportunity to work together in real time.

The organization pays more and more attention to the results of team collaboration. Namely the organization is more and more concerned about what impact the team collaboration tools plays on a organization. Team collaboration needs to prove its worth through a more scientific effect evaluation. At present, the four hierarchical