Abstract:

Distributed teams working across organizational boundaries often experience difficulties in sharing digital materials that are essential to their work. Although work deliverables require content co-production and exchange, we find that differing socio-technical practices, user access restrictions to file servers and divergent naming and filing practices impede smooth workflow operations. In this paper we describe a trans-organizational practice for extending a commonly available set of collaboration tools (email and file sharing) to address the information sharing requirements of a widely distributed project team. Our solution supports the sharing of digital materials such as domain documents, working notes, and coordination documents using email – the ubiquitous content sharing tool. To do this, we restructure the email client in a manner that preserves its original familiarity and functions, and extends it with text analysis, recommended personal tags, and agreed-upon, group tag naming conventions for automatic filing to shared repositories. We discuss how the practice and supporting technology work with the emerging “mashup” and “mashdown” notions of software development.