tailieunhanh - Internet Groupware Systems for Project Management: Experiences from an Empirical Study

With globalization comes an increased interaction between people of different countries and an increase in the need to deal with cultural differences. A project manager needs to understand his or her own culture and the cultures of the project stakeholders. The key to success in international business is the sincere desire to integrate into a new and different culture. Being part of a multicultural team has a lot of advantages like accumulating a lot of skills, beliefs and experiences that help make us unique. The culture gap tool highlights the biggest cultural differences between major stakeholders such as the project. | Internet Groupware Systems for Project Management Experiences from an Empirical Study Petra Schubert Uwe Leimstoll Tobias Wackernagel Institute for Business Economics IAB University of Applied Sciences UAS Basel Switzerland Peter Merian-Strasse 86 CH-4002 Basel Phone 41 61 279 17 90 Fax 41 61 279 17 98 Abstract The paper describes and analyzes the practical experiences made with different groupware systems over a period of three years. The experiences were drawn from empirical studies carried out as part of a long-term research project. The findings are based on surveys conducted each year among the project participants. The most recent groupware system used in 2002 offers numerous services of which almost exclusively the central document database the group calendar and the to do list were used. From the user s point of view the main advantages of the use of groupware can be found in an improved access to information and increased control of the performed work. On the other hand the use of the system consumed an additional amount of time and the personal contacts among the users were reduced. Overall the users see more advantages than disadvantages. They state that they would use a groupware system in future projects again. The comparison of the observations made during the last three years shows that usability and reliability of the user interface are factors which are decisive for the perceived usefulness and the acceptance of a system. The user interface and the technical reliability of the systems have improved over the years. 1 INTRODUCTION In recent years an increasing number of Internet-based groupware systems have been created for the support of distributed workgroups. The support of cooperative work processes with information technology has been studied by researchers in the area of computer supported cooperative work CSCW cf. Kies et al. 1998 Kamel Davison 1998 . The most widely used information systems for CSCW are groupware .