We are excited to tell you about how we are progressing with SWOOP for Microsoft Teams and give you a peek at what’s in store.

For those of you who have used SWOOP for Yammer, there will be little familiarisation required as most of the widgets and measures are similar to what you’re used to seeing. And you’ll be pleased to know that we plan on providing insights and recommendations on migrations between Teams and Yammer groups.

For those new to SWOOP, you will find SWOOP prioritises relationships and behavioural change over simple activity counts. We believe high performing teams are built on strong personal relationships; so that is where our prime focus remains. 

Similar to SWOOP for Yammer, SWOOP for Teams will start with your Personal Tab. Unlike most analytics tools that are made only for the analysts, SWOOP is designed for everyone. The familiar Personal tab will provide you with your personal analytics across all of the teams you participate in. If you are only working in a single team, your personal network map will visually show how you relate to your fellow team members. If you happen to be a member of multiple teams, your network map will reflect a more diverse network for you. The red reciprocation links show your closest team level buddies; and the more the better!

As always, this information is secured just for you. All of the other familiar personal widgets like your SWOOP Persona, Give-Receive Balance, Two-Way Relationships, Most Engaging Posts, Mention Index, and more, are all there.

The Business Unit Tab is for those looking to understand how their formal business unit is participating in Teams. Of course, many teams will have members drawn from multiple Business Units, so you will be able to see the comparative interactions that are wholly contained within the Business Unit, as well as those that are shared with other Business Units.

SWOOP for Teams also has a tab for exploring teams that you have access to, either because you are a member, or the team is an open one. The Teams tab very much mimics the ‘Groups’ tab in SWOOP for Yammer. We have, however, made one very important adjustment to support the emerging organisational structure commonly called the ‘Team of Teams’. Popularised by the not-for-profit sector and later the military, the model looks to replace the traditional organisational hierarchy with an adaptive network of teams, where both teams and individuals can react to rapidly changing contexts, with an agility not possible with a traditional hierarchy.

Unlike Yammer groups, we anticipate Teams groups will be smaller and more contained. Connections between teams will happen through overlapping memberships i.e. if you are a member of two teams, then you are a connection between these teams. If two teams have many common members then the connections between the teams will be illustrated as a stronger linkage. The Network Map display, along with the strength or relationship slider, will be available to visualise your team’s context in terms of its relationships with other teams. This widget will play a key role for those transforming to more agile forms of working; which we expect is nearly everyone. Team activity within team channels will also be viewable on this tab.

Finally, the Enterprise tab will provide insights across all teams and mimics the Enterprise tab on SWOOP for Yammer. The comparative group activity widget is replaced by a comparative team activity chart. The ‘Team of Teams’ widget at the Enterprise level will show the top-connected teams. On this display the tightly clustered teams could indicate a strength of focus, or perhaps some redundancy of work. For example, should some teams be collapsed or not? The Enterprise tab will also show those teams that are complete silos i.e. their members only exist in a single team. When would this be appropriate in a connected enterprise?

Of course, we have been able to understand how SWOOP works with work teams in Yammer for some time now. In fact, we have highlighted and benchmarked team-sized groups in Yammer in our most recent Yammer benchmarking report. 

We recently wrote about Building High Performance Online Teams, where we highlight some best practices for high performing online teams. In this article we also provided a recommended architecture for managing an enterprise ‘Team of Teams’, something we feel will be critical to those responsible for anything more than their own single team (which is likely to be nearly everyone).

In the longer term we hope to be able to provide insights and recommendations on migrations between Teams and Yammer groups, where small team-sized Yammer groups might be better serviced by MS Teams and where larger MS Teams could be better serviced by a Yammer group. In summary, SWOOP for Yammer and Teams will always prioritise relationships and behavioural change over simple activity counts. We believe high performing teams are built on strong personal relationships; so that is where our prime focus remains. 

For more information about SWOOP for Microsoft Teams, and to register your interest, please click here.