 Stop Whining and Get Back to Work(flow) is a great blog by Carol Rozwell on the need for Integration between the new social software tools and the existing applications workers must use is a prerequisite for adoption. Here is an excerpt:
Collaboration is a tricky matter. The basic premise is that people who need to interact with others in order to complete their work can be more efficient and effective if there are social software tools that enable social networking. But merely layering a veneer of collaborative applications on top of an existing set of applications generally does not make people more effective or efficient.
One of the reasons that social software implementations fail to help workers complete their activities faster or more easily is the lack of attention to workflow. Knowledge workers regularly use between three and 13 applications on a daily basis. They include general purpose tools such as email and document creation apps as well as custom apps specific to the organization’s business such as revenue or project tracking apps.
In order to get workers to use new social software acquired with the intention of increasing collaboration, it is important that these tools support the existing workflow. Integration between the new social software tools and the existing applications workers must use is a prerequisite for adoption.
We completely agree. People have been dazzled by social networking and collaboration technologies but have missed the point that it is all about getting the work done. Collaboration cannot be the goal - the goal is improving how we work together.
There is understandably little patience with process and workflow modeling, yet without it people needlessly reinvent the wheel, miss critical steps and checkpoints and flounder when they should be...well...flowing. A few simple rules and clear goals and outcomes might work for simple processes but very complicated business processes or large scale projects do require consistency in execution and cannot sidestep the need to consciously design work activities.
Unfortunately traditional ways of modeling processes and workflows are not only tedious and time consuming, they also force rigidity and needless constraints where there should be flexibility and healthy variation. What ValueNetworks.com and others are driving toward are faster, more organic ways of organizing the work - that allow people to quickly model human interactions as part OF the work. With that as a starting point we can then readily integrate collaboration patterns and social software tools with transactional data from workflow applications. It is this kind of integration that results in productivity breakthroughs. | 
