“Groupware” is all about things like “workflow”, which means, “the chairman of the committee has emailed me this checklist, and I’m done with item 3, so I want to check off item 3, so this document must be sent back to my supervisor to approve the fact that item 3 is changing from unchecked' tochecked', and once he does that, it can be directed back to committee for review.”
Nobody cares about that shit. Nobody you’d want to talk to, anyway.
When he puts it that way, it sounds a lot like the kind of infrastructure that’s gotten popular in tech in the past few years. Atlassian has basically a groupware suite, which is indeed all about workflow and organizing and checking off tasks, but mainly using chat and web as the interface points rather than email, and oriented specifically towards software development rather than general office work. A lot of teams who don’t go all in on Atlassian still use something groupware-ish they’ve put together themselves, based around Slack or Github and various workflowy things plugged into either or both of those.
Slack is pretty nice for modern groupware. It just doesn’t do the “workflow” type stuff this article describes. Instead it makes the fluid unformal parts like plain old chatting work better.
When he puts it that way, it sounds a lot like the kind of infrastructure that’s gotten popular in tech in the past few years. Atlassian has basically a groupware suite, which is indeed all about workflow and organizing and checking off tasks, but mainly using chat and web as the interface points rather than email, and oriented specifically towards software development rather than general office work. A lot of teams who don’t go all in on Atlassian still use something groupware-ish they’ve put together themselves, based around Slack or Github and various workflowy things plugged into either or both of those.
Google seems to be doing groupware pretty well.
That’s more of a function of the shambling advertising shoggoth they are than their core business at the start.
Go read about the history of project Chandler to see a groupware trainwreck in action.
EDIT: Would anybody care to disagree that advertising is the cornerstone of Google’s business?
Google has no groupware products. Buzz was their closest effort.
And Facebook has done well making social software to get 22 year olds laid.
Slack is pretty nice for modern groupware. It just doesn’t do the “workflow” type stuff this article describes. Instead it makes the fluid unformal parts like plain old chatting work better.