Cynthia K. Pickering

Crossing Spatial and Temporal Boundaries in Globally Distributed Projects: A Relational Model of Coordination Delay

In globally distributed projects, members have to deal with spatial boundaries (different cities) and temporal boundaries (different work hours) because other members are often in cities within and across time zones. For pairs of members with spatial boundaries and no temporal boundaries (those in different cities with overlapping work hours), synchronous communication technologies such as the telephone, instant messaging (IM), and Web conferencing provide a means for real-time interaction. However, for pairs of members with spatial and temporal boundaries (those in different cities with nonoverlapping work hours), asynchronous communication technologies, such as e-mail, provide a way to interact intermittently. Using survey data from 675 project members (representing 5,674 pairs of members) across 108 projects in a multinational semiconductor firm, we develop and empirically test a relational model of coordination delay. In our model, the likelihood of delay for pairs of members is a function of the spatial and temporal boundaries that separate them, as well as the communication technologies they use to coordinate their work. As expected, greater use of synchronous web conferencing reduces coordination delay for pairs of members in different cities with overlapping work hours relative to pairs of members with nonoverlapping work hours. Unexpectedly, greater use of asynchronous e-mail does not reduce coordination delay for pairs of members in different cities with nonoverlapping work hours, but rather reduces coordination delay for those with overlapping work hours. We discuss the implications of our findings that temporal boundaries are more difficult to cross with communication technologies than spatial boundaries.

Time Separation, Coordination, and Performance in Technical Teams

Technical teams are often distributed across geographic locations and across time zones. While spatial and time separation are often correlated, most prior studies have only focused on one or the other. As a consequence, their respective effects may be confounded when teams have both spatial and time separation. We argue that bridging spatial and time separation pose very different coordination challenges, thus their respective impacts need to be examined together to fully understand how geographic configuration influences team performance. We report on a field study of 123 technical teams conducted at a large semiconductor manufacturing company where we investigated how spatial and time separation influenced team performance. Our results show that time separation, in the form of maximum time zone difference spanned by members, has a stronger negative impact on team performance than spatial separation. We also show that this impact is indirect, i.e., large time zone spans create coordination problems, which in turn impact team performance. Put differently, when coordination problems are reduced, the negative association between maximum time zone span and performance disappears. We describe our findings and discuss implications for global team managers and collaboration tool designers.

Synergizing people, process, and technology to motivate knowledge sharing and collaboration Industry case study

Intel is the worlds largest Semiconductor chip manufacturing company with over 95,000 employees and 164 sites in 63 countries across the globe. Not only does Intels IT group keep Intels business operations running, it also contributes to Intels business transformation via user experience research and architecture path finding for leading edge technologies. IT sees social computing as a strategic way to improve collaboration, foster innovation, and facilitate learning. Our research has identified the best opportunities for using social computing and other technologies to boost collaboration and productivity across Intel. To keep achieving maximum benefit from its collaboration efforts, Intel IT continues to invest in social capabilities and also partners with Intel HR to help address cultural and motivational barriers. Beyond improving personal productivity, we are looking to enable efficiency in Intels business divisions for product design, manufacturing, and sales, through the use of cutting-edge social technologies, including social analytics, immersive video/sketching, federated identity and access management, and cross system activity stream aggregation. Our goal is to continue to transform collaboration across Intel into a seamless and unified experience that brings together relevant information, people, and business intelligence to fully support employee and business workflows.

A context-aware framework supporting complex ubiquitous scenarios with Augmented Reality enabled

In this paper, we propose a context-aware system framework characteristic of two novel features. First, this framework is capable of modeling highly complex usage scenarios as a finite state machine while having transitions controlled by context information. And, this framework is designed with Augmented Reality capability as an integral component in its overall architecture to enable augmented interaction in context-aware applications. We believe this framework can be used ubiquitously in Context Aware Computing (CAC). As an example, a prototype has been developed for the application scenario of a manufacturing factory. We will also present the implementation details of this prototype.

Spatial and Temporal Boundaries in Global Teams

While spatial boundaries include the geographic differences among team members (different cities), temporal boundaries include the workday differences among team members (different time zones). In global teams members have to deal with both spatial and temporal boundaries since their co-workers are often located in cities within and across time zones. For global team members with high spatial boundaries and low temporal boundaries (those in different cities in the same time zone), synchronous communication technologies such as the telephone and instant messenger provide a means for real-time interaction. However, for global team members with high spatial boundaries and high temporal boundaries (those in different cities in different time zones), asynchronous communication technologies, such as e-mail and web software, provide a way to interact intermittently. Using social network data from 625 team members (representing 5986 pairs) across 137 global teams in a multi-national semiconductor firm, we explore the impact of spatial and temporal boundaries on coordination delay. We also illustrate how member awareness can reduce coordination delay, thus increasing the likelihood of better global team performance.

Panel session I: Collaborative content creation

This panel will discuss collaborative content creation that is distributed and digital. Each panelist will provide a brief perspective on their research pertaining to this topic. A moderated discussion will then examine: 1) what approaches work best for different collaboration goals and different types of content, including text, software, and multimedia; 2) real-time and asynchronous content collaboration; 3) contributing factors to the collaboration success such as visual and awareness feedback; 4) potential barriers such as generational and / or cultural differences and their mitigation; 5) crowdsourcing and 6) other noteworthy trends and research findings.

Self service business intelligence (SSBI) for employee communications and collaboration (ECC)

As employees view, read, and interact with communications channels, advanced analytics can be used to understand whether these channels provide desired level of engagement or there is a need to improve or change these approaches to be more effective, and validate the impact of the change.

Multi-sensor fusion for interactive visual computing in mixed environment

Mobile Augmented Reality, as an emerging application for handheld devices, explores more natural interactions in real and virtual environments. For the purpose of accurate system response and manipulating objects in real-time, extensive efforts have been made to estimate six Degree-of-Freedom and extract robust feature to track. However there are still quite a lot challenges today in achieving rich user experience. To allow for a seamless transition from outdoor to indoor service, we investigated and integrated various sensing techniques of GPS, wireless, Inertial Measurement Units, and optical. A parallel tracking and matching scheme is presented to address the speed-accuracy tradeoff issue. Two prototypes, fine-scale mirror world navigation and context-aware trouble shooting, have been developed to demonstrate the suitability of our approach.

Game Architecture and Virtual Teamwork

The panel will provide some variety to the general conference content in the sense that it represents technology solutions and experiences that are socially aware. At this point, technologies and capabilities have advanced to the point that many previous socially-oriented issues have been overcome without this necessarily being widely known. This is the point for a good conjuncture of social informatics perspectives and technological developments. The audience is strongly encouraged to pose questions from their own frameworks for the enlightenment of all, bringing together some disparate disciplines in a common conversation.