Recently, I wrote about Second Life’s lack of usefulness in business. Since then, Craig Cmehil described how SAP uses Second Life, which has opened my thinking on the entire subject of virtual worlds. Now, I’ve come across a Second Life application that’s relevant to avoiding IT project failures.

MIT Researcher, Drew Harry, has built a Second Life environment exploiting the virtual world to help meeting participants overcome disagreement. From an article in Technology Review:

Since a virtual space doesn’t need to accomplish the same goals as a real space, [Harry ditched the conference] table. Instead, his virtual meeting room arranges people based on their allegiance. Where an avatar stands signifies whether a person agrees or disagrees with the position being discussed. The meeting room’s other visual features are designed to track the complexities of shifting alliances and opinions throughout a conversation.

Of course, meeting participants frequently hide their true agendas and positions, which Drew’s solution doesn’t address. Nonetheless, lack of consensus often drives non-technical complexity, an important component of IT project failure, making this concept intriguing.