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Collective Vision	Core Team	Roadmap	Application	Deployment	Sustainability
Thought leaders from like-minded entities come together within a circle of trust and mutual respect, resulting in a shared vision for a project. The benefit of collaborating in creating a collective vision is a set of mutually defined expectations for the project.	Technical visionaries, a subset of the thought leaders, collaborate to define features necessary to execute on the collective vision. A core team is formed: a team of subject matter experts committed to the process based on the benefits of shared risk and cost for the project as well as our program manager and developers.	When the subject matter experts from the community of like-minded entities collaborate with our project manager and developers, open communication allows for powerful collective results. The outcome is a specific set of features and functions (a Roadmap) for the application. Development priorities are also defined. Because there is alignment and commitment around a compelling community purpose, the rapid, iterative development process (lean and agile) promotes innovation.	The application is delivered to the subject matter experts, the users and thought leaders. Because the collaborative process uses a lean, agile and iterative process, extensive testing has already been completed. The benefit? Alignment to vision, meeting of expectations.	The application is deployed beyond the initial group to a larger group, to customers and partners, the networked community. As a result of the collaborative process, industry standards are often established. The benefit is predictive costs by offering the application on an annual basis, applications at a fraction of the cost.	Now you have the availability of industry standard applications, developed collaboratively by thought leaders, available as commercially supported released software or web-based applications at industry hosted sites (SaaS). The network effect creates economies of scale providing benefits of shared reward.

The word "core" in business describes that at which you are distinctly, uniquely competent. Furthermore, it is what you are best at that differentiates you in the market. As a result, your customers are willing to pay more for your core competency. It just makes sense to put most of your efforts behind that core, that differentiator. Everything else, once you accept that definition of core, is considered "context."

Context is equally important to the success of your company: if you fail to fulfill a context task, you could easily lose a customer, be out of compliance with regulation or law, or alienate an employee, a partner or your community. Core applications (those that differentiate you and greatly impact your customers) are usually best handled internally. All other applications are "context" - and are typically good candidates for collaboration.

Collaboration on context applications helps you save money, mitigate risk, speed innovation and reduce development time, freeing up your own resources to focus on those processes that provide you with a competitive advantage.