2,031 research outputs found
A set of nine principles for distributed-design information storing
No full textThe issues of distributed working are many, with problems relating to information access and information acquisition the most common (Crabtree et al., 1997). Keeping track of project and team information is becoming more complex as design is increasingly being carried out collaboratively by geographically dispersed design teams across different time zones. The literature notes that little prescription or guidance exists on information management for designers (Culley et al., 1999) and Hicks (2007) highlights a relative lack of overall principles for improving information management. Additionally, evidence from earlier studies by the author into ‘How information is stored in distributed design project work’ reinforces the need for guidance, particularly in a distributed context (Grierson, 2008). Distributed information collections were found to be unorganised, contained unclear information and lacked context. Storing and sharing of distributed information was often time consuming and the tools awkward to use. This can lead to poor project progress and can impact directly on the quality and success of project outcomes (Grierson et al., 2004, 2006). This paper seeks to address these issues by presenting the development, implementation and evaluation of a set of Principles and a Framework to support distributed design information storing in the context of a Global Design class. Through both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods the Principles were found to help in a number of ways – with the easy access of information; the structuring and organising of information; the creation of an information strategy; the making of information clear and concise; the supporting of documentation during project work; and the strengthening of team work; all helping teams to work towards project outcomes
An Input-Process-Output Approach to Interorganizational Teams: The Influence of Work Group Diversity, Trust and Shared Leadership on Communication Network and Team Outputs.
No full textThe market’s challenges bring firms to collaborate with other organizations in order to create Joint Ventures, Alliances and Consortia that are defined as “Interorganizational Networks” (IONs) (Provan, Fish and Sydow; 2007). Some of these IONs are managed through a shared partecipant governance (Provan and Kenis, 2008): a team composed by entrepreneurs and/or directors of each firm of an ION. The research is focused on these kind of management teams and it is based on an input-process-output model: some input variables (work group’s diversity, intra-team's friendship network density) have a direct influence on the process (team identification, shared leadership, interorganizational trust, team trust and intra-team's communication network density), which influence some team outputs, individual innovation behaviors and team effectiveness (team performance, work group satisfaction and ION affective commitment).
Data was collected on a sample of 101 entrepreneurs grouped in 28 ION’s government teams and the research hypotheses are tested trough the path analysis and the multilevel models.
As expected trust in team and shared leadership are positively and directly related to team effectiveness while team identification and interorganizational trust are indirectly related to the team outputs. The friendship network density among the team’s members has got positive effects on the trust in team and on the communication network density, and also, through the communication network density it improves the level of the teammates ION affective commitment.
The shared leadership and its effects on the team effectiveness are fostered from higher level of team identification and weakened from higher level of work group diversity, specifically gender diversity.
Finally, the communication network density and shared leadership at the individual level are related to the frequency of individual innovative behaviors.
The dissertation’s results give a wider and more precise indication about the management of interfirm network through “shared” form of governance
HaIRST: Harvesting Institutional Resources in Scotland Testbed. Final Project Report
No full textThe HaIRST project conducted research into the design, implementation and deployment of a pilot service for UK-wide access of autonomously created institutional resources in Scotland, the aim being to investigate and advise on some of the technical, cultural, and organisational requirements associated with the deposit, disclosure, and discovery of institutional resources in the JISC Information Environment. The project involved a consortium of Scottish higher and further education institutions, with significant assistance from the Scottish Library and Information Council. The project investigated the use of technologies based on the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), including the implementation of OAI-compatible repositories for metadata which describe and link to institutional digital resources, the use of the OAI protocol for metadata harvesting (OAI-PMH) to automatically copy the metadata from multiple repositories to a central repository, and the creation of a service to search and identify resources described in the central repository. An important aim of the project was to identify issues of metadata interoperability arising from the requirements of individual institutional repositories and their impact on services based on the aggregation of metadata through harvesting. The project also sought to investigate issues in using these technologies for a wide range of resources including learning, teaching and administrative materials as well as the research and scholarly communication materials considered by many of the other projects in the JISC Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme, of which HaIRST was a part. The project tested and implemented a number of open source software packages supporting OAI, and was successful in creating a pilot service which provides effective information retrieval of a range of resources created by the project consortium institutions. The pilot service has been extended to cover research and scholarly communication materials produced by other Scottish universities, and administrative materials produced by a non-educational institution in Scotland. It is an effective testbed for further research and development in these areas. The project has worked extensively with a new OAI standard for 'static repositories' which offers a low-barrier, low-cost mechanism for participation in OAI-based consortia by smaller institutions with a low volume of resources. The project identified and successfully tested tools for transforming pre-existing metadata into a format compliant with OAI standards. The project identified and assessed OAI-related documentation in English from around the world, and has produced metadata for retrieving and accessing it. The project created a Web-based advisory service for institutions and consortia. The OAI Scotland Information Service (OAISIS) provides links to related standards, guidance and documentation, and discusses the findings of HaIRST relating to interoperability and the pilot harvesting service. The project found that open source packages relating to OAI can be installed and made to interoperate to create a viable method of sharing institutional resources within a consortium. HaIRST identified issues affecting the interoperability of shared metadata and suggested ways of resolving them to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of shared information retrieval environments based on OAI. The project demonstrated that application of OAI technologies to administrative materials is an effective way for institutions to meet obligations under Freedom of Information legislation
Social interaction, team tacit knowledge and transactive memory: empirical support for the agile approach
No full textThe agile principles of social interaction and tacit knowledge were examined in this survey study of 48 software development teams. It was proposed that that team tacit knowledge is created through frequency and quality of social interactions and through the development of a transactive memory system. Results supported the hypothesis with quality of social interaction playing a greater role than transactive memory in the creation of team tacit knowledge, although transactive memory did not mediate the relationship. This study provides empirical support for the cognitive processes involved in tacit knowledge creation, which underlies the agile approach to software development
An organizational framework for the use of web-based tools in ""Virtual"" project teams
No full textThe project management of virtual teams differs from that of traditional ones. Traditional project risks like complexity, the uncertainty of factors influencing the project, and the high interdependency of project tasks must be managed alongside changed temporal, geographic, and cultural dimensions. Numerous researchers have investigated the factors influencing the success of virtual teams, but little research has been done to understand how to align technology with team and project tasks. When investigating virtual team technology, mediation should be considered as a central theme, while new web-based project management tools are likely to affect project management processes, particularly for virtual teams. This thesis investigates how virtual project teams should select and use Internet/web-based tools to improve the team's performance and the satisfaction of its members. In the last three years I have observed, questioned, and interviewed 28 project teams with 167 team members in Germany and South Africa. The sampling and analyses of these teams were approached using grounded theory and aimed at developing a resultant theory. The major theoretical contribution of my research is a holistic framework relating the effects on virtual project teams of Internet/web-based tools. The goal of my research was to develop a theory to explain the selection and use of web-based tools by virtual teams operating in different contexts, and to explain and illustrate the consequences of the use of different tool combinations. My results contribute to practice by providing a number of guidelines for management of virtual teams as well as knowledge required by companies wishing to launch projects with virtual teams. Differing performances of teams can in many cases be attributed to such conditions as: limited Internet availability and bandwidth; lack of training for certain tools; the wrong selection and use of tools that are either not integrated/do not support adequate sharing among team members/do not help to manage the tasks and promote transparency about progress made. Definite areas emerged where tool selection and use, or lack of use of appropriate tools, affected performance. My theory also emphasises that besides the project and team context the personal preferences and distance from work of each member are important when selecting and using web-based tools in a distributed work setting. While communication is the heart of project teams, sharing is the soul of project teams that are virtual and use web-based tools. Task awareness is a key influencing the team members' satisfaction
Development of a team measure for tacit knowledge in software development teams
No full textIn this paper we operationally define and measure tacit knowledge at the team-level in the software development domain. Through a series of three empirical studies we developed and validated the team tacit knowledge measure (TTKM) for software developers. In the first study, initial scale items were developed using the repertory grid technique and content analysis. In Study 2, supplied repertory grids were administered to novices and experts to establish differential items, and Study 3 validated the TTKM on a sample of 48 industrial software development teams. In developing the TTKM we explored the relationships between tacit knowledge, explicit job knowledge and social interaction and their effect on team performance as measured by efficiency and effectiveness. In addition we assess the implications for managing software development teams and increasing team performance through social interaction
Risk Assessment of the Project to Migrate to the Free Office Suite Under Linux "End-User" Group
No full textThe penetration and performance of free software is raising issues regarding its true capacities and, particularly, the desirability of choosing it. It is from this perspective that the Linux Migration Project was launched within the Sous-secrétariat à l’inforoute gouvernementale et aux resources informationnelles (SSIGRI). The project, supported by a CIRANO research team, seeks to assess the risks involved in the migration project and to identify the conditions for success. This report describes an assessment of the risk exposure of one of the groups participating in the project: end users. Principal results The risk assessment that was conducted enabled the following observations to be made: The project risk exposure is medium to high. Three objectives, and more particularly the first, are vulnerable to a relatively high level of risk: Operational continuity for the user, Interactional continuity for users, and Technical support. Two risk factors were undervalued in this project because of the very nature of the project: Mismatch between the functionalities of the free office suite/functionalities targeted by the organization; Degree of interdependence with non-project units/persons. This factor is important as a result of the context in which the project is being carried out, particularly the absence of a shared interoperability framework. A review of these risk factors could result in a new positioning on the risk exposure map for four of the five objectives, in particular for the two objectives that are related to the two undervalued factors.
The influence of team factors and team processes on game based learning in student teams
No full textThe significance of teams, teamwork and team performance is unprecedented in many learning environments of institutes in higher education and organizations. While individual and team tasks are quite straightforward to define, teamwork is a set of interrelated cognitions, attitudes and behaviours that contribute to the dynamic processes leading to team performance. To address the research gaps related to team processes and team factors related to game based learning, we conducted a quasi-experimental gaming session using a multi-player game called Yard Crane Scheduler 3. Our analysis of the game session showed that mutual performance monitoring had a significant positive effect on team task performance, while mutual support between team members had a negative effect on the team task performance. Shared mental models and closed loop communication were important for the team task performance but the development of shared mental models through shared displays and the effectiveness of closed loop communication were hindered by time pressure related to the team task. Our findings indicate that knowledge of team factors and team processes that affect team performance can help instructors to design team tasks and evaluate students in an efficient and holistic manner.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Policy Analysi
Institutional repositories in New Zealand: comparing institutional strategies for digital preservation and discovery
No full textThis paper outlines an ongoing project to create of a knowledge base to support the development of institutional repositories in New Zealand. The knowledge base wiki includes a summary of key literature to date, highlighting best practice, and standards relevant to the New Zealand sector, and a set of case studies of how New Zealand institutions have developed their repositories to date. These case studies are analysed, and different strategic approaches taken by institutions across the sector identified. These will then be discussed in relation to the issues identified in the literature. The paper also outlines new research areas being developed by the research team, a national approach that will link individual institutional approaches with the goals of the New Zealand Digital Strategy, and incorporate a survey of the perceptions and responses of NZ academics, and other key stakeholders, that are critical to the success of both the national strategy and individual institutional initiatives
Virtual teams: A literature review
No full textIn the competitive market, virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for fasting time-to-market, low-cost and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Virtual teams enable organizations to pool the talents and expertise of employees and non-employees by eliminating time and space barriers. Nowadays, companies are heavily investing in virtual team to enhance their performance and competitiveness. Despite virtual teams growing prevalence, relatively little is known about this new form of team. Hence the study offers an extensive literature review with definitions of virtual teams and a structured analysis of the present body of knowledge of virtual teams. First, we distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams, different types of virtual teams to identify where current knowledge applies. Second, we distinguish what is needed for effective virtual team considering the people, process and technology point of view and underlying characteristics of virtual teams and challenges they entail. Finally, we have identified and extended 12 key factors that need to be considered, and describes a methodology focused on supporting virtual team working, with a new approach that has not been specifically addressed in the existing literature and some guide line for future research extracted.Virtual team, Literature review, Effective virtual team,
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