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Abstract Upstream oil and gas organizations continue to face challenges to prove that the digital oilfield will improve decision-making, achieve higher quality analysis, and effectively use smaller pools of skilled resources. Both corporate and business unit champions recognize that an Integrated Collaboration Environment (ICE) can be the integration platform to support various digital oilfield and performance improvement initiatives. Initially, some companies took a "Field of Dreams" approach, expecting that once video-conferencing and visualization workspaces are built, their professional staff "will come." Increasingly, even these companies now recognize that successful projects must develop a plan to integrate people, process, technology, and facilities to enable new ways of working. This paper proposes a framework to realistically diagnose performance requirements against a company's digital oilfield or integrated operations strategy, and to chart an ICE development path to match. In addition, we share some lessons learned from recent ICE implementations projects for drilling, production operations, and/or optimization. Whether for new or legacy assets, we are learning that success depends on (a) engaging objective, third-party consultation to help the management team articulate a shared vision for collaboration, integration, and real-time support; (b) investing time and resources in a participatory conceptual design phase that focuses on the user experience; and (c) a design/implementation methodology that addresses all the dimensions of change—process, organization, people, technology, and facilities, inclusive of a professional project management with experience leading joint internal/external teams to deliver complex system integration projects. By clarifying the performance vision framework and applying some of the lessons learned from early adopters, we see that a well-designed and professionally implemented ICE can resolve inefficiencies, "handoff" disconnects, and communications gaps between the field and the office. Better yet, the ICE will generate a step-change improvement in "real-time" surveillance, interpretation, decision-making, and quality execution, embedding it as the new and "natural" way of working.