INF3290

Telenors Way of Work

Case study
Examining the concept of Critical Mass in relation to the implementation of Way of Work as an information infrastructure 10/26/2010

Jacqueline Osei Bonsu Camilla Jrmeland Johan Malmanger John Alexander Bye

Contents
1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 About the assignment ................................................................................................................. 4 1.2 Telenor.......................................................................................................................................... 4 1.2.1 Telenor a large organization spread across borders ...................................................... 5 2 Interaction across borders ................................................................................................................. 5 2.1 Communication throughout history ............................................................................................ 5 2.2 Telenor before Way of Work ........................................................................................................ 6 3 Telenor Way of Work ........................................................................................................................... 6 3.1 Collaboration solutions communication even when stranded .............................................. 6 3.2 Way of Works key technological components........................................................................... 6 3.2.1 SharePoint ............................................................................................................................ 6 3.2.2 Office Communicator ........................................................................................................... 8 3.3 Structured collaboration Way of Work .................................................................................... 9 3.3.1 The vision .............................................................................................................................. 9 3.3.2.1 Installed base .................................................................................................................. 10 3.3.2.2 Implementation ............................................................................................................... 11 3.3.3 Evolution ............................................................................................................................. 12 3.3.4 Impact on workflow ............................................................................................................ 12 3.4 Is Way of Work an Information Infrastructure? ........................................................................ 13 4 Critical mass ...................................................................................................................................... 17 4.1 What is critical mass?.............................................................................................................. 17 4.2 Critical mass in Telenors Way of Work .................................................................................... 18 5 Factors ............................................................................................................................................... 20 5.1 Factors that make an impact on infrastructures ..................................................................... 21 5.2 Factors of success ..................................................................................................................... 21 5.2.1 Easy to use .......................................................................................................................... 21 5.2.2 Easy to update .................................................................................................................... 22 5.2.3 Increase in the use of the new platform (WoW) ............................................................... 22 5.2.4 To enhance communication within the company ............................................................. 22 5.3 Challenges .................................................................................................................................. 23 6 Strategies........................................................................................................................................... 23 6.1 Strategies for the WoW-project ................................................................................................. 24 6.2 Alternative strategies ................................................................................................................. 25 6.2.1 Strategies to keep evolving the infrastructure ................................................................. 25 7 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 26 Page | 1

8 External links ..................................................................................................................................... 28

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1 Introduction

In the wake of the ongoing demand for efficient telecommunications and information technologies, there has been an escalating focus on the implementation and improvement of inter-organizational systems and extensive infrastructures in contemporary business organizations today. The transition from autonomous information systems and complex applications to interconnected corporate-wide information infrastructures and simple application system has boost up the efficiency of information communications world-wide. This includes global networks suCase study: examining the concept of Critical Mass in relation to the implementation of Way of Work as an information infrastructurech as Facebook, Twitter and other online communications platforms. Facebook, for example, is in itself not valuated on the basis of the web applications or its features, but rather on the user base platform.

The use of cell phones and other communication devices on the other hand, is one of the fastest growing telecommunication platforms used amongst workers in organizations as well as individuals for personal purposes. Actually, it would not make any sense to own or even buy a mobile or cell phone when no one is using them. This brings us to the point of how important the user base of an information system is, in regards to its availability and efficiency to users, and the number of people using it. The estimated amount of users of these information systems (infrastructures or platforms) needed for such communications to be possible is what is known as critical mass. Factors that may influence critical mass in relation to socio-dynamics may include the size of the user base system, interrelatedness and level of communication in a society, or the possibility of public advocacy due to such factors (Wikipedia, October 2010).

Many organizations today use different information systems to enhance communication amongst workers in their various departments. Different aspects of these information systems have been largely focused on the study of information technologies, designed for supporting specific work practices and roles in work places. An example of this is the Microsoft SharePoint, which includes the windows SharePoint service (WSS), the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and the Microsoft search server. Each of these carries their own functionalities to the table and builds upon each other (AIIM, 2010).
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The Telenor Way of Work (WoW) is also one of the SharePoint-platforms which enable collaboration between the employees and their departments. This project was designed to help the Telenor Company in more effective and environmentally friendly internal communications, as well as sharing knowledge (Transform AS, 2009). The WOW project focused on various strategic decisions to achieve critical mass by enhancing its value with a solid user base infrastructure.

1.1 About the assignment

Our project will mainly be centered on the description of these specific information structures which is an implementation based on a SharePoint-solution called the Telenor Way of Work (WOW), giving a brief history of the foundation of the Telenor company and how it is spread across borders of the world.

Furthermore, the project would also give a short description of the interaction across borders with emphasis on communication throughout history, as well as how Telenor was before the introduction of the Way of Work project. This would then give us the stand to describe what the Telenor Way of work is, with special attention to the collaboration solutions in general, key technological components that make up Telenors Way of Work, SharePoint, governance within the corporation and the use of the Office Communicator as a platform for SharePoint.

We will also elaborate on some structured collaboration involved in the Way of Work platform and its vision amongst others. Then the rest of this essay would concentrate on what critical mass is as far as WoW is concerned and then give a summary concluding our investigation on the wow project from the result attained from the interviews.

1.2 Telenor
For more than 150 years of accrued experiences within telecommunication together with a pioneering spirit and a quest for knowledge and development, the Telenor group has been able to establish operations in about 13 markets around the world, and still expanding. In collaboration with the history of the Norwegian telecom, the company name; Telenor, has gone through several phases of changes. The public company that started out in the year 1855 as the Royal Electric Telegraph is now what we know as Telenor. It is currently one of the
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global shareholding companies offering some of the most advanced telecommunication technologies and services in the world (Telenor group, 2010).
1.2.1 Telenor a large organization spread across borders

From the fasters growing national telephone Service Company in Norway to one of the worlds largest mobile providers in less than two decades, Telenor has been able to establish various communication services in about 14 countries across Europe and Asia. From the time of its initial Public Offering in year 2000, Telenor had a mobile subscriber base of 15 million, shooting to about 184 million by the end of the second quarter of 2010. Currently, the Telenor group is engaged in pioneering research and technology development and other areas that are vital to the promotion of development of the core business in Telenor (Telenor, 2010).

2 Interaction across borders

The purpose of having platforms designed to support communication across borders, is to overcome the barrier of distance and time.

2.1 Communication throughout history

It is not only the ways in which humans communicate that has changed throughout history, but also the tools that support them. In the ancient world, people used to engrave symbols in trees or stones, or make fires to send smoke-signals, in order to communicate messages to people far away.

In terms of organizations or companies, there has always been a need to communicate, whether its across national borders, inter-organizationally, or company-wide. As companies expand, the communication gets even more important. The need to communicate information, emphasize the fact that an organization like Telenor, is an open system, with a need to interact with its environment.

In order to communicate, companies need channels for information-sharing.

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2.2 Telenor before Way of Work

A common approach to communication and network systems that has been used by numerous companies worldwide, is groupware such as the Lotus Notes. Group-wares like these are commonly complemented with communication tools like the regular e-mail, instant messaging and blogs.

3 Telenor Way of Work

Way of Work is not a solution consisting of one or two single systems. In fact, it consists of several major systems which when coupled together make up only a part of what it really is. Before further defining Way of Work, it is important to have at least a basic understanding of collaboration solutions in general, and the key systems that play an important role in Way of Work.

3.1 Collaboration solutions communication even when stranded

Six months ago, in April 2010, the true potential and value of collaboration solutions were put to the test when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajkull erupted and contaminated the European airspace with thick ash clouds. The volcano single handedly managed to bring northern Europe to a standstill by grounding air traffic bound to and from several major airports, and it undoubtedly affected a lot of business activity.

With a collaboration solution in place, volcanic activity and other non-controllable events can have its effect on a business neutralized by removing the need of geographical presence. With unified communication, the construction manager who never made it with an airplane could have overseen his building site via Video Chat from his home, and invite the client representative for a simultaneous build inspection even when stranded. (UCE, 2010)

3.2 Way of Works key technological components

3.2.1 SharePoint

SharePoint is first and foremost a family of products developed by the Microsoft Corporation. If you had to guess what SharePoint is, just by looking at its name, you would probably guess that it is a solution that allows the users to share things. This is not far off, but SharePoint is much more.
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SharePoint is, in essence, a collaboration platform tailored to corporate environments and organizations. It allows for structured collaboration between colleagues, departments, across projects and across borders, but what exactly is structured collaboration?

Imagine a software development company that has just started a new project. Specifications and several use cases have to be written. While these documents are still being written, they have to be passed back and forth between managers and other project participators for approval and input. The traditional corporate way of doing this is to create an email, attach the document in question and send it off to the people wholl do work on it, usually more than one person. There are several reasons as to why this is a problem when collaborating with several people on one document. Firstly, by going the traditional route and sending the document off as an attachment in an email adds an administration overhead. The people who receive the email have to open the document up, and add their content, and then return the document back to the sender. The sender then has to stitch the newly added content together with his or her own copy. Secondly, the traditional route is a blocking operation. In many cases, person A has to finish his work before person B can start his. This means that by sending the document as an attachment, person A is actually blocking person Bs progress until person A returns his document back to the sender and the sender then notifies B. Thirdly, with all the documents being sent back and forth with additions and omissions its easy to lose track of exactly what changes that has been to the document.

SharePoint intends to solve the issues that traditional corporate collaboration suffers from. One of the ways that SharePoint does this is by allowing the sender to make sure that there is only one instance of the document available. This alone reduces the administration overhead, and removes the need for document stitching. SharePoint also features a content revision system, similar to what developers use to manage code bases, which track all changes that are made to a document. This enables progress tracking and frees the sender of having to contact each of the editors for status updates. With SharePoint, instead of sending the document itself, you send a link that points to a centralized instance. This instance of the document can be edited by several people at the same time, and the editors can view additions almost instantly thus editing documents via SharePoint is a non-blocking operation. (MS-SP)

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Another key feature of SharePoint is that it lets employees within a corporation broadcast and share their knowledge via their own personal SharePoint site, thus assisting knowledge management within the corporation.
3.2.1.1 Governance

Governance within a corporation relates to policies, customs and processes affecting the way a corporation is directed and administrated. Due to the sheer size and possibilities of SharePoint and the customizability it allows, a solid governance plan is recommended if not required to make sure that a specific SharePoint installation can and is fulfilling its intentions and that it is not left unmanaged. To aid businesses adopt SharePoint as their collaboration solution of choice, Microsoft have come up with several governance plans which are ready for use (TNSP, 2007). However, just like people vary so does businesses, thus many businesses spend resources on developing such a plan.

A SharePoint governance plan should outline the administration, maintenance and support of the SharePoint Server. It should identify and address stakeholders such as executive sponsors and champions, policies (e.g. related to provisioning of sites), education and training plans and so on. The goal of such a governance plan is to establish governing IT policies that the SharePoint instance will adhere to. This will in turn help to reduce the risk of e.g. scope creep, i.e. when a project drifts away from its original purpose, by establishing solid change control and a solid executive sponsor. (TNSP, 2007)
3.2.2 Office Communicator

Office Communicator, now known as Microsoft Lync, is another product developed by the Microsoft Corporation which plays a role in Way of Work. It features instant messaging, Voice over IP and Video Conferencing all in one single client.

Instant messaging is widely used by people to communicate with friends and family, and Office Communicator is tailored to bring this type of communication to the corporate environment. For example, communication via Office Communicator does not have to leave the intranet, which makes it more secure. Office Communicator is usually integrated with an existing Microsoft Outlook installation which is connected to a central Microsoft Exchange Server. This integration allows the Office
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Communicator client to display the availability of contacts based on the contacts individual Outlook calendars. This means that if Amy needs a word with Brad, but Brad is currently in a meeting, Amy will be notified that Brad is in a meeting until 2 PM and she can then decide to get back to him when his status changes.

Office Communicator further strengthens collaboration within a corporation with features such as Voice over IP. This means colleagues that would normally communicate via e-mail can get in touch from wherever they are with a single click, and you can go even further. With Office Communicators Video Conferencing feature, employees can discuss issues face to face, without being at the same geographical location. Should you need help with an application that is running on your computer you can easily share your desktop screen with a colleague, and allow him or her to take control of your session. Office Communicator also integrates tightly with SharePoint by letting you know if other colleagues are working on the same document as you (MS TechNet).

3.3 Structured collaboration Way of Work

3.3.1 The vision

Telenor WoW is Telenors take on Unified Communications: in essence the goal is to improve communication and collaboration. The vision for Telenor Wow is fairly complex, and covers not only technical aspects, but also environmental goals and perhaps most importantly the organizational and the human aspects such as cooperation within the company. There were obvious geographical and cultural challenges: connect 35 000 employees spread over 12 different countries. Working with slogans such as An easier workday and Connected people work smarter the planners and developers clearly had their task cut out for them.

A system such as Telenor Wow is naturally meant to streamline several aspects of the users everyday workflow. In our interviews the interview object used the many challenges related to storage of files as an example. In a multi-user environment there will be redundant copies spread between different contributors, version problems, access restrictions and even the question of simple storage-space. Another essential element is communication within the company. WoW aimed to improve internal communication with several tools, such as instant messaging with a presence-function, as well as video and voice-chat.

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WoW is also an effort from Telenor to go green, the idea being that moving the actual information (digitally in this case) is friendlier to the environment than moving people. With WoW Telenor hope to reduce their travelling with as much as 20 to 30% within a few years (Trigger #10).

Telenor also generates revenue by delivering Unified Communication systems to other companies, and as such the experience and feedback from developing and using WoW is valuable in of itself.

The goal of using this technological platform to spread a culture of sharing information within the company is perhaps the ultimate vision behind WoW. As stated by Bjrn Magnus Kopperud, director and a sponsor of the project, Telenor Wow is not an IT-project, but an organizational development project (trigger #10). This was also confirmed in our interviews, and further described in the evolution section below.
3.3.2.1 Installed base

From 1993 to 2002 Telenor acquired several companies, and the majority of these companies were not so called green field operations. A green field operation is best described as exactly that, a green field which is empty and that one can build upon without having to worry about existing systems that are already in place. This meant that the companies that soon became a part of the Telenor organization together consisted of a mixed bag of different systems. Some offices had a SharePoint instance, some used a shared drive and others nothing at all. What they did have in common though, was that the collaboration systems that were in place were only available through that specific office intranet. In other words, there was no common platform in place. The Way of Work project wanted to provide a common platform for collaboration that would span across the entire organization. One example of an office that already had a SharePoint instance running was Telenors office in Oslo. This SharePoint instance was running mainly to comply with the SOX act. Since this instance was running an outdated version and there seemed to be no governance in place, it was decided that the only option would be to green field the Way of Work infrastructure and in other words, start with a clean slate.

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Even though Way of Work did not directly build upon an installed base such as an already running SharePoint instance, installed base can still be said to have existed in several dimensions. For example; selected content from other systems was migrated from old systems to the new Way of Work platform and employee data was migrated from existing solutions to the Way of Work platform. If we take the term installed base even further, one could say that Way of Work built upon installed base in the form of the employees knowledge and user experience with solutions such as instant messaging. In other words, the concepts that Way of Work involved were not new to many of the users in the organization.

3.3.2.2 Implementation

As Bjrn Magnus Kopperud stresses in his interview in Trigger, WoW was not implemented using a standard Top-down enforcement policy, but rather slowly introduced by incorporation of different elements of WoW in different key projects, thus allowing other employees to see the system and its benefits in action - also known as the pull effect. This was confirmed both by the subject who was involved in the implementation process and by the end-user subject as well.

One subject made a point of explaining that Human Resources and IT often are very separated and somewhat skeptical of one-another. During the development and implementation of WoW it was made a priority to involve both IT and HR throughout the entire process.

While the pull-approach of creating interest for the system, as opposed to forcing it on employees worked to a certain extent, changes were eventually made to make WoW build momentum faster, the push-approach. Examples are actively approaching different user groups to show potential benefits, introducing collaboration-advisors, using the foot-in-thedoor-approach to increase familiarity with the system by introducing simple aspects of the system such as Instant Messaging and identifying and providing solutions to cultural and technical difficulties.

The changes had a positive impact and the active use of WoW is not only increasing but constantly at a rapider rate. The subject involved in the implementation identified the keyfactors for growth as ease of use, speed, relevance and most importantly accessibility. Accessibility caused the most drastic increase in use.
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3.3.3 Evolution

As most systems of this magnitude WoW suffered from some growing pains. The speed from the implementations key-factors was a particular problem. When communication software suffers from lag, users will revert to their old and proven technologies.

When asked what about positive evolution for WoW, our interview object pointed to SPs newer versions default-settings for projects being a lot more friendly for a company with Telenors collaborative culture. Now, as opposed to previously, you would need to distinctly restrict access on a new project. By default they are open to be viewed by all members of the WoW platform. Newer versions are also easier to use, which is another key element from the implementation success. Obviously the WoWs evolution is not only revolved around its technical maintenance, but by its evolving user mass. Not just the amount of users, but also the users increased abilities and interest. The Internet object confirmed that the WoW-users skill and insight in the system is constantly increasing as they gain more experience.

As for hardware improvements, the gains seem to be countered by higher demands of new versions. Our subject compared this to an arms race where the increased power is nullified by higher requirements by new software, and also the higher demands from a user mass which is growing both in numbers and in complexity.
3.3.4 Impact on workflow

WoWs impact for the end-user is somewhat obscured by the blurry lines of WoWs nature. What is part of WoW and what is not? For our end-user subject this could be hard to determine. He used Outlook as an example. Outlook is well integrated in WoW, yet it is also commonly used by people outside of Telenor entirely.

The essence of WoWs, or any other similar systems impact on day-to-day workflow appears to be closely linked to the specific work tasks of the subject. Our interview subject had several examples of how different user-types found very different improvements in their workflow. Advisors and others that have days heavily revolving around meetings mainly use the LiveMeeting planning software, people that are forced to travel take advantage of the
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presence-system on their mobile devices while people working on shared documents and similar, such as researchers, will find the biggest benefits in sub-version and central storage systems.

When poised with the question that if a system so dependent on central storage and cloudcomputing could cause bigger problems with downtime or other technical issues our end-user replied that while temporary net-problems could cause something paramount to panic, he believed that such problems would have had similar impact even without WoW due to peoples dependency on the Internet in todays work environment. He also said that people found their own solutions contingency plans, such as local backup and using older technologies such as phone-conferencing to combat lagging sound on net meetings.

Interestingly the biggest impact our interview object noticed with the introduction of Telenor WoW was not a technical one, but a human one: that of peoples attitude towards sharing information and collaboration. Telenor now has a culture for knowledge-sharing. WoW is incorporated in everything from the intranet portal sites sharing different divisions progress and ideas, to the open office landscapes which encourage the sharing of ideas in a more physical way. This is proof that Telenor was able to succeed in perhaps their most far-fetched goal: to spread a collaborative culture within the company or at the very least reinforcing it, by introducing an informational infra-structure.

3.4 Is Way of Work an Information Infrastructure?

The difference between a system and an infrastructure is not always obvious, nor is the difference between an information system and an information infrastructure. To aid the decision of whether or not an infrastructure is in fact an Information Infrastructure, also known as II, the definition by Ole Hanseth will be used. Hanseth defines an information infrastructure as a shared, evolving, open, standardized, and heterogeneous installed base. (Hanseth, 2002). In this chapter, well answer these criterias one by one and conclude whether or not Way of Work satisfies these.

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Shared As mentioned earlier in this paper, Way of Work is a collection of several systems that are tightly integrated with each other and communication between these systems have to be in place for the platform to serve its purpose. The communication mentioned involves sharing of data between systems that do not necessarily share the same set of activities. Hanseth wrote; as the number of applications a specific application is integrated with grows, the application changes character: from an ordinary application supporting a specific set of activities towards an infrastructure for a larger set of activities within a larger community. (Hanseth, 2002) Its only through sharing the data that Way of Work contains that the solution has a use. The infrastructure is shared by a collection of users and user groups. In our view, Way of Work does meet the criteria of being shared.

Evolving Hanseth writes; a key characteristic of infrastructures is the fact that they evolve continuously. (Hanseth, 2002)

Way of Work has been continuously evolving since the first iteration through the work done to meet change requests put forth by stakeholders, and through software and hardware upgrades. Way of Work maintains a roadmap with major releases twice a year. At the moment, the transition from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 is underway.

With this in mind, Way of Work does meet the criteria of being an evolving infrastructure.

Open Hanseth writes; Openness in this context means lack of borders..

For an infrastructure to be regarded as open there should be no border that decides the number of elements it may include, such as a restriction of the maximum amount of users. Hanseth also writes that an infrastructure is also open in the sense that there is no limit to who might participate and contribute to its design and deployment. Lastly, its development has no beginning or ending its development time is open. (Hanseth, 2002)

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As already mentioned above in the discussion regarding whether or not Way of Work can be thought of as an evolving infrastructure, the development phase of Way of Work is an ongoing effort and change requests are still being filed by the users and met by the project team.

Way of Work consists of several systems that are licensed. These licenses come with certain restrictions, such as an upper limit for the amount of users that may use the solution. However, the issues regarding licensing are just as surmountable as having to upgrade e.g. server capacity to meet an increasing user base. Therefore, it is our view that Way of Work meets the criteria of being open.

Standardized Hanseth writes; Standards are a crucial aspect of open infrastructures (Hanseth, 2002)

Way of Work is a project that spans companies, borders and cultures. With this in mind, it is apparent that standards had to be in place that would describe how data should be added and shared via the Way of Work platform. To achieve awareness of these standards, every user of Way of Work was offered a package deal containing learning material that described how the platform was supposed to be used. In addition to the learning material, one person in each department was assigned the role of being a Collaboration Advisor whose task was to aid in the correct use of the platform.

The systems that Way of Work consists of are developed by Microsoft and the systems themselves are proprietary. However, the protocols that enable interaction with these systems are well documented, such as the SharePoint protocol which is built on the open WebDAV protocol.

In our view, Way of Work meets the criteria of being standardized.

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Heterogeneous A standardized infrastructure can also be heterogeneous, for example in the sense that they include components of different kinds. Hanseth uses the example of TCP/IP which is built upon a wide range of more basic telecom infrastructures (Hanseth, 2002).

Way of Work can be said to be heterogeneous in several ways. Firstly, Telenor is an organization which is spread across borders and Way of Work is being used by departments in several different countries. This means that the pool of end users is comprised of many different cultures and thus Way of Work can be said to be heterogeneous on the non-technical human and social level.

Secondly, Way of Work is heterogeneous in that it consists of several systems that build upon a wide range of infrastructures and protocols. For example, SharePoint which is a part of Way of Work runs in an application container, which uses the HTTP protocol, which uses the link layer and so on.

The aforementioned information leads us to believe that Way of Work is heterogeneous in several dimensions and thus it meets the criteria of being heterogeneous.

Installed base When the Way of Work project started in 2006, one of the goals was to keep the customization of the systems within Way of Work to a minimum. The reasoning behind this choice was to enable easier transitions to new versions of the proprietary systems that are a part of the platform. Where in some infrastructures the development is limited by an earlier version, the greatest limiting factor in Way of Work was rather the wish of not going too far beyond the out of the box functionality. It is important to note, however, that this does not mean that no changes were and are being made to the infrastructure because this type of activity was and still is being carried out, and these changes still have to fit with the infrastructure as it is at that moment (Hanseth, 2002).

Summary It is our view that Way of Work qualifies as an information infrastructure that is indeed a shared, evolving, open, standardized, and heterogeneous installed base. (Hanseth, 2002)

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4 Critical mass
4.1 What is critical mass?
Critical mass is a sociodynamic term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and fuels further growth (Critical mass (sociodynamics), Wikipedia). Today critical mass is used, amongst other things, to set milestone goals in implementation processes as well as a tool to predict longevity of a new system.

The term critical mass is used in a wide variety of fields, but was applied to computer mediated communication as early as 1968 by the American computer scientist J.C.R Licklider when he explored the computer as a communication device. At such an early stage critical mass was merely defined as the required number of active users for a system to be at all plausible to solve a given problem. While critical mass has been the topic of many articles since then, its relevance only increases with the number of social networks and platforms that are deployed these days. Everett M. Rogers published the book Diffusion of Innovations in 1962 where he looks closer at challenges posed by introducing innovations. While his research originally was intended for social studies it has become widely accepted in communication and technology adaption studies (Everett Rogers, Wikipedia).

As for strategies to achieve critical mass when introducing an innovation Rogers suggested having highly respected individuals in a network or organization adopt the new technology, the idea being that these will then work as trendsetters and create a desire for the product in question. He also suggests injecting an innovation into a group of individuals that are open to new technologies, in order to create success Tories and positive reactions. Rogers also introduced the term early adopters, who are the first wave of end-users of a product and may work as trendsetters, and stresses their importance as targets when introducing an innovation. The early adopters are to Rogers essential in building momentum towards critical mass.

The theory of critical mass also shares several similarities with the One-third hypothesis launched by Hugo Otto Engelmann (One-third hypothesis, Wikipedia), and one third seems to be a common number when deciding on a goal or milestone for achieving critical mass, and as we will see in section 4.2 it was also the amount chosen by Telenor.
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The concept can also be described by what is called Metcalfes law which states that The value of a network increases with the square of the number of users connected to the network (Metcalfes Law, Wikipedia). In connection to the Telenor Way of Work, this means, the more employees use the WoW solution, the more valuable and useful WoW becomes. The diagram below shows the law of Metcalfe; illustrating how a systems critical mass defines and creates value for its users.

Figur 1: This diagram shows the network effect in a few simple telephone networks

4.2 Critical mass in Telenors Way of Work

The group in charge of implementation defined the critical mass as one third of the employees in Telenor. To introduce something bottom-up to a huge quantity of users, stretching across such geographical distances, and with a group you could hardly call heterogeneous, they certainly had their work cut out for them. On the bright side, with Telenor having an large amount of employees that are interested in new technologies, as seen earlier in the article, finding early adopters would not be much of an issue.

To track their progress, various statistics were tracked and monitored. This allowed the group working on the implementation to check not only the amount of users, but also more detailed information like how many communicator sessions were started and such.

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As mentioned briefly in the implementation section, one of our interview subjects explained that a common problem when training individuals from different departments they would learn things but when they returned to their usual departments they would fall back into the traditional way of doing things. It was much more beneficial to get whole departments or pick certain projects which seemed suited to implementation of the new tools, and establish a workgroup. Since SharePoint in its core revolves around collaboration, learning the tools with their day-to-day co-workers helped people bring back their new skills and actually implement them in their workflow. In essence one could say that Telenor successfully started by attaining critical mass within select parts or departments of the company, rather than instantly aiming for the company as a whole.

On some occasions reorganizations or the dissolving of workgroups would lead to the individuals being spread around the company. While overall detrimental, one of our subjects found that occasionally some of the individuals were seen as opinion leaders or innovators, and were able to plant a seed in their new departments, and therefore causing WoW to spread in an unexpected way.

From our interviews another interesting dilemma regarding critical mass arose: users may be reluctant to use new technology because the availability of the new technology throughout the company is low, and the availability will remain low because people will not want to start using a technology which has a low amount of users.

On the subject of critical mass, one of our interview subjects says that there are many factors that play an important role in how a critical mass can be defined and achieved. One factor he mentions is the intensity of use. Put simple, the intensity of use of the system varies. While one employee may use WoW in pretty much every task they conduct, other may just use WoW on occasions. Another evident factor is the systems number of users. He believes that the number of users is way past the one-third that was set to be necessary in order to obtain a critical mass, but that the intensity of use is decided by the work-tasks performed. To illustrate, the Communicator is set to default when an employee turns their machine on in the morning. The question is then if the user can be included as a part of the critical mass? The interview object says that it is formal organizational structures that decide the work-tasks, and that it is informal cooperation-relations that decide if an employee or department is either an insider or an outsider of the system.
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One important finding from the interviews is the notion about how work-tasks define what is relevant to the use of WoW. The employees everyday life decides what tools in the WoWsolution they would use in connection with work. If their day was filled up with meetings, they would necessarily use LiveMeeting. If they are traveling most of their day, they would use the communicator.

This obstacle was negotiated by the introduction of collaboration advisors (described in section 3.3.2.2) in departments throughout the organization. Due to their insights in their department and co-workers tasks they were well equipped to help new users understand how WoW could facilitate their own workflow.

From our interviews and research it seems then, that Telenor, whether by design or not, used Rogers strategies by compartmentalizing groups and injecting WoW (the establishing of workgroups and project-based implementation) and to a certain extent made high-profile individuals use and promote the system (collaboration advisors). Another thing to note is that after the decision was made to install WoW company-wide, which in turn drastically increased accessibility, the usage finally started to grow at the rate Telenor initially wanted. This reflects Metcalfes Law in that the networks value increased as soon as the end-users did no longer need to worry about what other parts of the company were equipped to use the WoW-solution.

After critical mass was attained no effort has been put in promoting the WoW package, but according to statistics shown to us by our subject involved in the implementation process, the usage is now growing at an exponential rate.

5 Factors
The analysis that follows is an analysis of the case described above. In this analysis, we have looked at both success-factors of the SharePoint and Telenor WoW infrastructure, and also challenges in relation to it. Thereafter follows a description of the projects strategy, where this was used as a template to come up with possible alternatives. We also made our own contribution by suggesting strategies to help evolve the infrastructure - to make it sustainable.
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5.1 Factors that make an impact on infrastructures

evolving, installed base (Hanseth, 2007). It is clear that there must be factors, in fact numerous factors, which play an important role in not only how infrastructures are first implemented, but also in how they evolve over time.

5.2 Factors of success

There were many successful factors that were identified with the introduction of the Telenor Way of Work. These were used as hypotheses to find out which factors were likely to play a significant part in determining project successes based on the initial analysis of the case studies and their prior experience with the initial settings of the SharePoint. Factors which functioned well and were already familiar to most employees with a close connection to the Live Messenger was Facebook, and Skype which are all known applications. Below weve listed the factors that we identified as the most successful ones.
5.2.1 Easy to use

Getting people to use instant messaging was not a big deal for most of the users. this is because most people were already aware of this method of sharing information based on the knowledge of the use of MSN and other communicative medium like Facebook and other chat rooms. This made it easy for people to understand the use of the wow very easily. it helped in their work flow.

Furthermore, to increase the user friendliness of SharePoint, a role named Collaboration Advisor was created. This was done by appointing one employee in each department to this role, and one of tasks that the role had to fulfill was playing the role of a change agent. Instead of having employees within a department call someone who in most cases did not have knowledge of that departments use case for Sharepoint, they could instead talk with one of their own colleagues.

It was also easy for the workers to learn about the new introduced platform by mixing the knowledge of SharePoint with the usual way of work and expectations in a particular department. i that way, it was easy for the workers to link the use of the SharePoint to their

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daily routines which made it quite easy for lean, without having to do so much about the new implementation.
5.2.2 Easy to update

Before the introduction of the Way of Work, there were two instances of SharePoint which were in use. But a Little customization on the programming was needed to new developed platform to make the SharePoint work. so the fleet from the old platform was not that difficult to undertake.

Furthermore, there were two other existing SharePoint platforms in use before the introduction of the wow project. One of them was not built on a proper scale enough so the Telenor had to work with Avanada who was their solution partner to help customize their SharePoint especially with the header menu and other components which also made it easy to update the systems into desirable user-base systems (the wow platform).
5.2.3 Increase in the use of the new platform (WoW)

The increase in the rate of use of the new platform was quite astonishing. this result was obtained through a statistical research which was carried out every year on the number of users. this thy did by asking people about their opinions on the use of the new SharePoint platform, the advantages and disadvantages in terms of its usability and ease with working in relation to people outside the internal organizations.

Also, the use of the pull approach was very relevant in the enhancement of the growth of the Way of Work platform. Because there were too many systems in Telenor, therefore Pushing a system could have led to "systems fatigue and since systems were not mostly around for too long, people were not actually expected to learn so much of the systems that were installed.
5.2.4 To enhance communication within the company

From the case study, one other noticeable reason for introducing this new platform was to improve communication within the company. the Telenor Way of Work was actually aimed at improving the internal communication as mentioned earlier., such as instant messaging with a presence-function, as well as video and voice-chat. this has led to a more user friendly information system, making it less difficult for workers to communicate on a common
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platform that only shared within and between the different departments in the organizations. With the Telenor WoW platform, the company aspires to cut down their cost of traveling within some few years. This is to spread a culture of sharing information within the company which is the main goal for the establishment of the communication.

5.3 Challenges
One of the challenges faced with the introduction of the SharePoint was that, it was not really user-friendly. Getting people to use the SharePoint was quite harder for most users. this was because it depended on people working together. So the closest reference was the use of shared drives which was because SharePoint could not be used as share drive. This was because the shared drive used only 20% of its functionality. This could be referred back to the use of installed base in the company, not taking into consideration what kind of installed based was used in the company but rather, the installed base in terms of the knowledge or experience of the users with different systems.

With the introduction of the pull approach, though it was a good strategy, one had to sign up for a number of sessions of e-learning and seminars in order to get the whole package deal to get access. Also, because of e.g. re-organization of the systems, the pull approach wasn't recruiting people fast enough, so it took about a year to reach 2000 users. Then for 6 months the user base expanded to 4000 and another 6 months later, they were at 8000. This showed growth but at a slow pace. So with this growth rate, the company anticipated a period of 3 to 4 years to be able to meet their target user base capacity, which was quite a challenge for them.

6 Strategies
Strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. (Wikipedia, 2010). This means that it is in fact the strategy that decides whether a goal is reached or not, depending on whether the initial strategy turned out to be a successful one, or a failure. Strategies can be hard to design, especially when depending on numerous factors that has to be taken into consideration.

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6.1 Strategies for the WoW-project

It took us a year to reach 2000 users, another 6 months they were at 4000 and 6 months after that they were at 8000. It was growing, but they were going to need 3-4 years to get where they wanted to be.

There were initially made one generic strategy for the adoption process of both Instant Messaging, and SharePoint. Later in the process, this was divided into two strategies. The instant messaging part of the solution was already known to most employees, since these kinds of mass-communication tools were commonly used already. For this function, they just put the client out there, and gave the employees some tasks to be performed, in order to learn its basic functions. In this way, the instant messaging function can be seen as a foot-inthe-door approach; if they could make people use this one function, it would be much easier to affect peoples attitude towards using other functions.

On the other hand, the strategy and adaption approach for the SharePoint solution as a whole was utterly different. The strategy used was to contact head of department, and question them about whether or not they actually wanted to have a SharePoint-site for their department. The head then discussed this with the department members, which collectively made a decision and decided on how they would want to use SharePoint. This was an approval process, where project-members had to present to the departments sketches of different SharePoint sites.

Having two different strategies proved to be a success in the WoW project. Why it worked so well and therefore became a success, was because the complexity of the tools was so different. It would not work to throw people into something unfamiliar, and then expect them to gain interest right away, nor to have a long-term strategy for something that is already familiar to the users, as it would be a waste of time. The most successful approach towards gaining interest, has time and time again shown to be the one which includes or represent something familiar to the user. When it comes to implementing and presenting something completely new, the approach has to be different, taking one step at a time - which they did.

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6.2 Alternative strategies

It is not easy to come up with alternative strategies to strategies that already proved to have such a great success. But success can also be measured, and one can question whether alternative strategies would result in even greater success. However, as described in the case, two particular holes, or mistakes concerning the initial strategy, was the strategy towards gaining users, a critical mass, and thereby towards adoption.

Because the user mass showed not to be growing fast enough from the beginning because of re-organization, they had to change strategy, and went from the pull approach to a lets give everyone this tool- approach. Even if this new strategy was implemented at last, an alternative would be to use this from the beginning at. This would probably require more resources in order to educate employees, as there would not be super users in each department like the first strategy emphasized.

The same goes for the adoption-strategy, as it would probably be beneficial and time-saving to have implemented two separate strategies from the beginning, thus almost being guaranteed success right away. These two alternatives only show that changes to the initial strategy can prove to be crucial to the projects outcome and in this case, necessary to gain success. It is not known if the project group had thought out several strategies from the beginning, or if these evolved parallel to the SharePoints accomplices. Either way, we would suggest making several strategies from the beginning, and by that being more prepared and able to react quickly to mistakes discovered along the way.
6.2.1 Strategies to keep evolving the infrastructure

Strategies to keep evolving the SharePoint and WoW infrastructure would definitely revolve around keeping the infrastructure useful to its users. The day the employees dont see the usefulness in having such a tool, finding other ways to manage their work, WoW would go under. As for now, it is the employees which keep the infrastructure sustainable, simply by using it.

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One strategy would of course be to always be on the lookout for functionalities or smart tools under development. This will always keep the infrastructure up to date, and therefore secure its future. New tools and new ways of doing things evolve rapidly, whether its a new tool for communicating, saving documents, or just sharing an idea. It is therefore necessary for the information infrastructure to keep up with this development.

At the same time, one strategy should be to always keep the SharePoint-solution simple enough, so that no one decides to or unwillingly stops using it because of its complexity and slow learning-curve. This is one example of how the success-factors of an infrastructure can be adapted to define new strategies for evolution. As these factors indicates success, there should be designed a strategy which aims to look after these factors and to adapt them to new versions and functionalities.

7 Conclusion
Telenor approached the task of implementing WoW with a sound mindset: to not force it upon its employees from above, but rather attract them through a multi-faceted strategy to create positive reactions and desire to use it. Perhaps more important than the well-planned approach was the willingness to face challenges and make changes adapt underway.

The decision in the later stages to switch to the Push-approach and roll the system out company-wide in order to increase accessibility, rather than considering it a defeat and stubbornly sticking to the initial plan, was definitely a key aspect in achieving critical mass on schedule. This worked not only because the system was already well-established in parts of the organization, and because of the installed-base aspects of the easier components of WoW, such as the communicator and scheduler, but because Telenor eventually realized that instead of using the same adoption strategy for the whole package, they used different strategies for different components, and users could get the training relevant to their own work tasks. Telenor managed to obtain critical mass and WoW is not only growing rapidly, but its doing so without any extra effort, freeing up time and manpower to keep up with maintenance and evolution, as well as planning for future versions of the platform. We also saw that as critical mass was reached, the value of WoW to its actual users increased drastically. This could be said for all products or systems that run on a network; unless the critical mass is reached the
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product will do little or no good to its end-users. This further enhances the need of reaching critical mass as soon as possible.

As we have seen in this analysis, many of Telenors choices during the process, such as the compartmentalizing and creating a desire for their innovation by adopting WoW in key areas of the company, are more or less dead-on with the guidelines and theories regarding critical mass. We have not only seen what strategies Telenor used to attain critical mass, but also why this concept is so crucial in implementing a collaborative system. Several of these concepts are nearly 50 years old, conceived long before todays social networks and cloud-computing, yet to this day they remain surprisingly relevant.

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8 External links

AIIM 2010: - SharePoint:

o

http://myhosting.com/sharepoint/what-is-sharepoint.aspx

Transform AS, 2009 - Telenor Way Of Work (wow)

o

http://www.transformlearning.com/projectdetails.aspx?id=34

Wikipedia, October 2010:

o o o o

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass_(sociodynamics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Rogers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-third_hypothesis

Teleport group, 2010

o

The history of Telenor

http://www.telenor.com/en/about-us/our-history/norwegian-history/

Telenor - A large organization spread across borders

http://www.telenor.com/en/about-us/our-business/

Trigger Kundemagasin

http://www.telenor.no/bedrift/aktuelt/trigger-kundemagasin/

TNSP, 2007
o

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb507202.aspx

UCE, 2010
o

http://www.unifiedcommunicationsedge.com/content/irony-ash-clouds-ciscoand-tandberg

MS-SP
o

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/nb-no/Pages/default.aspx

MS TechNet
o

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262338(office.12).aspx

Hanseth, 2002
o

http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~oleha/Publications/ib_ISR_3rd_resubm2.html

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