You can now sign up to be a beta participant of SAP’s 12sprints project, “a collaborative environment for people to make better decisions based on data” or a “people-connecting, data-sharing, decision-making tool that actually sets work in motion.”
Early versions of the prototype were glimpsed during demonstrations by Léo Apotheker and Ian Kimbell at SAP SAPPHIRE in Berlin last year, and by Marge Breya at SAP TechEd in Vienna, and the project is now letting people sign up for pre-beta access to the prototype.
Beta users will get access to a “virtual war room” with various types of decision-making tools available. According to the www.12sprints.com site:
“It’s not just a place where things get discussed. It’s where things get done. Invite the right people. Bring in the pertinent data. And choose the most informed course of action with the help of pre-defined, interactive decision-making tools. It’s all built in. Everything you need to get everyone on the same page — finally under one roof.”
Marge Breya recently repeated her SAP Tech Ed demo for Information Week’s Fritz Nelson, with a scenario based on people collaborating on go-to-market strategy after a new company has been acquired:
“…[it’s] about a purpose-driven experience, and the user gets to design it. So I can set up my own purpose whenever I want, invite the people I want, and get the exact data I want and expertise at my fingertips.”
Marge is invited to review the current decision goal, timeline, data etc.
Marge decides that she disagrees with the current plan, so enters a new negative opinion:
And uses another labs project called “Kona”, the next generation of on-demand business intelligence, to get the data she needs:
Here’s Fritz’s commentary:
“We began with 12 Sprints, which I can best describe as a collaborative workspace, with a combination of project management and data sharing. You can pull in rich data feeds and share knowledge and make decisions, all in real time. In some ways, it resembles the modern Wiki. Where we explored other tools that help find and analyze data, 12 Sprints is where you would bring the most pertinent information back for team decision making.”
“Both 12 Sprints and Kona are cloud-based applications, run by SAP. Neither are available today, but both are expected to enter beta testing in November, with full release set for the first quarter (Kona) and first half (12 Sprints) of 2010.”
Business intelligence used to be called “decision support systems”, but the tools available have typically focused on gathering information, not the real-world collaboration required to turn that data into actual decisions and actions.
But that’s changing rapidly. According to Gartner:
“2009, Collaborative Decision Making will emerge as a new product category that combines social software with BI platform capabilities”
If you’re interested in finding out more, you can get news by following the 12sprints team on Twitter or by signing up to be one of the first to get exclusive access to the beta.
Comments
13 responses to “SAP’s 12sprints Collaborative Decision-Making Prototype”
How does a tool like this compare with Decision Lens (another collaborative decision making tool)? Does 12s operate on any known mathematical theorem on the back end in the same way that the Decision Lens tool operates on AHP? If not then what power the math behind the results that 12s provides?
Looks like a very cool tool, going to give it a try myself!
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I can just say WOW!!
A colleague told me about 12s this morning and right after I started to invite friends for alignment which film to watch tonight at my home cinema system.
I am deeply impressed by 12sprints (but also by my brand new home cinema with blue ray and dolby surround 😉
It is an innovative and cool collaboration tool. Like it.
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I currently wouldn’t trust the security of the app
https://www.12sprints.com
https://www.12sprints.com/test.php
No, that’s not a security issue with the application (I accidentally did the same thing).
12sprints is just the project name. The landing page is at http://www.12sprints.com (i.e. not https). And when you sign up for beta, you go to a different subdomain, which points to the “real” server, and uses https, with the correct certificates, etc.
So there should never be any reason to go to to https://www.12sprints.com, which is why they didn’t get the certificates, etc.
Thanks for your excellent article and inspiration. http://www.ramgad.com/2009/12/03/sap_moves_into_the_cloud/
Excellent Information, Timo. I was just looking for the same product, when Google Wave launched. Google Wave is much open, 12Sprint is quite perfect for close environment.
Thanks for the information. But I am not able to sign in for Beta. Is it closed?
Thanks
Sachin
I registered but I have not received any email to get access to the tool.
Please advise
Apparently, there were (are?) some legal issues to do with users in Germany (data privacy laws?).