MyBBT and the Coconut project is about the implementation of a company-wide extranet and knowledge sharing platform. The goal of the platform is to facilitate easy communication and collaboration between internal and external parties and consists of various collaborative tools such as document sharing, versioning, discussion boards etc. The document describes not only the technical aspects of such an implementation, but also the techniques used during the project to receive maximum user feedback and broad user adoption. www.FITT-for-Innovation.eu

1. Collaboration Setup for Research
CoCoNut and MyBBT
FITT
– Fostering Interregional Exchange in ICT Technology Transfer –
www.FITT-for-Innovation.eu
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

2. Practice in general
• CoCoNut = an internal IBBT project involving
researchers from many domains & backgrounds
(sociologists, economics, engineers, law researchers,
mathematicians, etc.)
“research the ways in which IBBT researchers work and interact, design
the ideal collaboration/sharing environment to work efficiently while
being geographically spread.”
• MyBBT = the implementation of the coconut findings
“Smart, interactive, attractive collaboration & knowledge sharing
platform for IBBT researchers and partners”
2 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

3. Practice step by step
Step 1: Present state analysis
Step 2: Conceptual Modelling
Step 3: Technology Mapping
(MyBBT)
Step 4: Dissemination &
Valorisation
3 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

4. Step 1: Present state analysis
Investigate the environment
- What are the usability criteria for optimal acceptance?
- What are the socio-professional criteria for optimal acceptance?
- Who are the relevant stakeholders, relations & working routines
Investigate the market
- What technical tools and non-technical building blocks
- Create inventory of best practices
4 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

5. Step 1: Present state analysis - results
the environment
- IBBT is very heterogeneous, be cross browser / cross platform
- Both early adopters as laggards among the users, tool must technically be
state of the art as well as very simple to use.
- Current working routines are very diverse. Information is spread
throughout the enterprise.
the market
- Established companies have excellent tools, but they tend to assume one
platform and one set of clients.
- For our case: more relevant stakeholders in the open source solutions.
5 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

6. Step 1: Present state analysis - results
6 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

7. Step 2: Conceptual Modelling
SOTA on multidisciplinary & virtual communication
- ‘literature’ study
- Focus on models rather than tools
Integrate previous findings into a general common model
- Model to be used in step 3 (technical implementation)
- Model to be used in ‘Cookbook’
Developing Cookbook
- Set out the basis for a living cookbook, an IBBT manual
- First version is written here, and handed to community afterwards.
- Cookbook describes best practices in various aspects of the project work
7 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

8. Step 2: Conceptual Modelling
8 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

9. Step 3: Technology Mapping (MyBBT)
System architecture layout
- Market study
- Write technical specification
System implementation
- Using an Agile approach (6 sprints spread over 4 months)
- Using CoCoNut users (~40) as feedback audience
- Implementation based on Alfresco Share but adapted to the needs of IBBT, as
defined in the first two steps.
- Main functionality: Wiki tool, Document Sharing functionality, Discussion boards
etc. per project
- Aggregation of all project data in user/project dashboards.
9 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

10. Step 4: Dissemination and Valorisation
System v1 live: October 2009
- Relatively small number of projects (20) and users (300)
- Close interaction with novice users is vital
Disseminate results to IBBT community
- Make people aware of the cookbook
- Have people contributing to the cookbook
- Organize some events (e.g. We-BBT 2010)
Continuous development!
- Get a feedback loop going.
- Listen to the users, implement and listen for feedback again. Repeat.
10 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

11. MyBBT? Please join us!
11 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

12. 12 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research
12

13. When?
Timing
• Original concern: at the very start of IBBT
• Project CoCoNut: started in Jan 2008, ends Dec 2009
• MyBBT platform: launched october 2009
• MyBBT is a continuous effort.
• CoConut will continue in 2010 for:
- User feedback and interaction
- Redaction tasks on Cookbook (maintain integrity of information)
- Specific tasks that require specific knowledge. E.g. usability issues, metrics or
security.
13 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

14. Who?
Stakeholders
• IBBT
- Active involvement of 5 people.
- Should involve the entire staff (30) in time, as the system is vital for
IBBT in a horizontal way throughout the organisation.
- At stake: structuring the information in the entire organisation, as well
as optimising the internal processes.
• IBBT researchers
- Core group of 15 FTE involved during project.
- Feedback board of 40 users during project (about 120 man days)
- At stake: obtain a usable one stop shop for all project related
information, tailored to their needs.
14 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

15. Where?
Location
• In all 5 universities of Flanders, at IBBT and online.
• Most of the work was done online.
• Monthly meetings were there of course, but video conferencing and
online collaboration tools were the larger part of this project.
15 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

16. Pro’s & Cons
Pro’s
• Strong user interaction during setup & implementation
• MyBBT itself: all project knowledge in 1 platform
• User-centered approach for continuous development.
Cons
• Adaptability of Alfresco: it is possible, but not always as easy as it
may seem.
• Users can be very demanding. This is not necessarily a bad thing,
but you will have to work hard to keep up. Make sure you have a
skilled team ready.
16 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

17. Why ?
Why was it established?
• IBBT is a decentralized structured organisation
- 900 researcher spread over 5 universities and many more campuses.
- Equal amount of research partners in industry
• There was no common work space before MyBBT
- Projects did have separate, closed collab websites
- This means: no knowledge sharing cross projects, no overview for
senior people that participate in more than 1 project
- Hence: little or no tools for knowledge sharing.
17 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

18. Why ?
Impact
• All tough very young, the system is received quite well.
• Most added value for seniors, who need overview and dashboards
• When everybody uses the tool in the right way we should be able to:
- Provide a single source of info regarding IBBT projects to our researchers
- Have one single point of entry for all IBBT related questions that are not
publically available
- Have clear processes and practices defined and documented
- Have a good way to communicate to the IBBT community, or segments of it.
18 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

19. Outcome
What happened after the implementation
• As said: the system was received quite well.
• Researchers are inclined to start new projects on MyBBT (such as
contract research), although we do not oblige them to do this.
• Many bug reports bottom up. We consider this a good thing.
• Unexpected side effects?
- More work than expected
- API proves a very useful tool, even more than expected. We already managed
to roll out an integration with our survey platform, contact DB.
- API makes for a powerful administrative tool (e.g. give me all projects of type
X, and of those projects all the project managers).
19 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

20. Outcome
Plans for the future?
• Continuous development of MyBBT
- After phase I ended with go-live in Oct 2010, phase II was launched
- Scope based on early experiences of users and our own input based on our
experience
- Initial scope: better feedback mechanism, better email client integration, RTE
enhancements for the wiki.
• Follow up project of CocoNut
- Given the success of CocoNut, we will continue to use our own research
group as prime input for MyBBT or even other projects
- use the expertise of IBBT research groups in IBBT production environment
20 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

21. Lessons Learned
Looking back now we would …
• Probably invest even more time into the project.
• Put more focus on feedback to the feedback group
• Giving feedback to users that have invested a lot of their time into this
project is key to keeping them motivated and active.
• Content is key
• Especially for the extranet, content is truly the key to success
• Invest early on in the project in writing that content
• Invest early on in people that will continuously working on that content.
21 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

22. Collaboration Setup for Research
tested by INRIA
At INRIA we wanted to create a collaborative platform with the objectives of:
Fostering national transfer initiatives led by INRIA
Build a sector-specific platform (for example, mobile services)
Bring together the different stakeholders (research, industry, SMEs) and create the
community
Lead this community by providing added value information
Our approach:
Identify the stakeholders at the national level
Create the necessary Web 2.0 tools
Stimulate technology transfer oriented discussions
22 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

23. Collaboration setup for research
in practice with INRIA
Lessons Learned
An online work environment was necessary to bring together people from
different organisations
In order to be attractive, there was a need to focus on a given sector and on
user/community needs
In order to boost innovation in a defined sector there is a need for tools which
provide networking opportunities and centralise information on the sector
It is necessary to put a lot of human efforts and energy to make the created
community attractive and sustainable
The time is necessary to be able to assess the usefulness of the experience
23 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

24. Collaboration Setup for Research
tested by Digiteo
Our objective was to test a collaborative tool used in a research institution with a similar
organisation in ‘network’ (gathering labs from different research organisations, launching
collaborative projects involving different teams). Therefore, the tool MyBBT of IBBT was of
particular interest.
In this context, there is a strong need for:
centralized information : to facilitate work of scientists & administrative staff (reporting,
answering to call for projects…)
information system : to extract and analyse the required information from numerous
sources (internal databases etc..)
Customization of access : to navigate in the large amount of information and get directly
the information related to your project(s)
IBBT allocated project accounts on MyBBT for Digiteo to manage 3 projects during 6 months.
The allocation of project accounts was the preferred option, as it was not possible in the test
timeframe to do conceptual modelling and technical realisation of an own tool.
24 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research

25. Collaboration Setup for Research
Lessons learned by Digiteo
Even the simplest tool requires time & some getting used to. It’s worth proposing a simple
user guide including visuals for the most frequent operations (majority of the users) and a
detailed, longer version.
Clear added-value of having a single source of information on a (collaborative) project : clear
vision of project history, repository of documents enabled by nice functionalities (personalized
dashboard, common calendar, list of recent changes etc…). Careful to classic pitfall though:
too many functionalities/options that are rarely used and discourage the users.
Structuring tool that will modify the way of working = long process, involving numerous
stakeholders. The risk is to develop a platform that will be complex to use or not known.
Massive communication efforts & guidance at the launch (announcement, training sessions,
endorsement by management) appears as key success factor to ensure a quick appropriation
and sustainability in the long run.
Our recommendation: link internet website (window for scientific activity targeted to general
public) and internal platform/ intranet (project management), to have one single access point.
25 | 03/2011 Collaboration Setup for Research