After watching the launch video for Wave, Google's new collaboration technology, I followed a link to another video about "live collaborative editing." Since I had expected to see more details on the applications that Lars Rasmussen, Jens Rasmussen, and Stephanie Hannon had demoed, it was a bit surprising to hear a Google developer talk for several minutes about session management. And therein lies a bit of the initial confusion about what Google Wave will be, or what it's most likely to turn out to be.
Before coming to Forrester, collaboration and content management were my main focus for several years. It's a fascinating topic, full of interesting challenges for product designers. For example, how do you get the average person to comply with corporate or regulatory directives, when they impose extra work on top of the work they're already doing? How different is the collaboration between people within the same organization, as opposed to collaboration across organizational boundaries?
Watching the Google Wave demo, therefore, was almost a nostalgic moment for me. Oh my stars, I remember the days when the collaboration technology was new, and the use cases were vague to the point of being practically nonexistent. We got by with nothing but gumption and a compiler.
As impressive as the technology is, the use case is where projects like these get lost in a jungle of possibilities. Or, at least, one part of them, the application, faces this risk.
There are just too damn many use cases in the collaboration and content management space for it to be practical to cover all of them in a single application. Focus is essential, particularly at the beginning of the design process. Sure, being able to re-purpose your photo gallery in your blog looks neat, but does this represent any business problem that needs to be solved? You could ask the same question of the "everyone sees the edits in real time" functionality: Do people really want to work that way? Maybe some people do--say, legislative aides drafting a bill--but is that the audience you really want?
The funny thing is, Google already has a very popular collaborative document editing solution. A lot of people enjoy editing a document in Google Apps, and then sending the link via Gmail. This combo is good for a particular market, which may be the same one for which Wave is designed.
Still, Google doesn't necessarily have to design the killer app for Wave to be successful. The APIs and moving parts beneath it may be attractive to other ISVs, who then build better applications than Google's. What Rasmussen, Hannon, and Rasmussen demoed might never need to go beyond being the proof of concept for the underlying platform.
However, it's important to remember how much the application drives the API. If you want to build an application that will excel at handling compliance use cases, you'd better make damn sure that the objects and methods give developers credible ways to build auditing and security features. On the other hand, if you want to support self-organizing project teams, you'll stress things like workgroup administration and content state (draft, review, completed, etc.).
Therefore, Google can't be completely indifferent to the applications it wants to support on the Wave platform. Strategic technology decisions during the early stages dictate how far collaboration technology can go, and in which directions.
Hi Tom, love reading your stuff and cheers to the boardgaming.
A question: Do you really think all ventures should start with a targetted problem? Surely you see that capability can inspire opportunities.
And when you have deep pockets and a customer segment who can better be described as fans it makes sense to take a punt from time to time.
Posted by: Craig | 07/02/2009 at 03:14 AM