Which collaboration patterns are most challenging: A global survey of facilitators

Facilitation is a key success factor for effective group support systems (GSS) applications. The development of effective support for facilitation becomes more critical than ever as decision making groups are larger and globally distributed. Developing support for a facilitator is a promising avenue for creating successful distributed GSS. This paper presents the results of a questionnaire to attain valid information for determining which facilitation functions practicing facilitators find most and least challenging. This guides the development of support for facilitators. First, literature on facilitation functions and collaboration patterns is reviewed. Then a questionnaire is designed to collect data from over 171 facilitators around the globe. This questionnaire collects information on the collaboration patterns that are perceived most demanding for certain facilitation functions from a facilitators' perspective. Finally the data is analyzed and presented for discussion