Eva Alice Christiane Bittner

The emergence of mutual and shared understanding in the system development process

[Context and motivation] In interdisciplinary requirements engineering, stakeholders need to understand how other disciplines think and work (mutual understanding) and agree on the system they develop (shared understanding) in order to collaborate effectively. [Question/problem] In this paper we analyse extent and forms of (lacking) mutual understanding according to the periods in the process of conceptual change. [Principal ideas/results] We analyse the communication of a multidisciplinary team while developing a mobile application. Although the team tried to resolve differences in meaning early on by applying approaches for clarification, questions for consolidation, exploration and elaboration occurred at different points in time throughout the process. Even when artefacts were already agreed upon, the development team explored lack of mutual understanding to underlying concepts or relationships. A revised shared understanding led to adjustments of the artefacts and thus hampered the process. [Contribution] We therefore call for research that explores ways of systematically building mutual and shared understanding in the development process.

Why Shared Understanding Matters -- Engineering a Collaboration Process for Shared Understanding to Improve Collaboration Effectiveness in Heterogeneous Teams

Solving complex problems often requires experience and perspectives of various, often heterogeneous experts. Shared understanding of the task is an important determinant for the performance of collaborative groups [1, 2]. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the systematic development of processes that lead to a shared understanding within heterogeneous groups. To address this challenge, we provide a systematic, reusable process to support groups to converge towards a shared understanding of a task to be then able to collaborate more effectively and efficiently. To achieve the proposed goal, we develop a collaboration process grounded in theory based design guidelines, including activities for individual (1) and collaborative construction of meaning (2) as well as constructive conflict resolution (3). We ground our work in group cognition research and apply a collaboration engineering approach [3]. We test the process design in a computer-aided requirements elicitation workshop with experts from different professional backgrounds. We identify strengths and limitations of the process design to enable the development of think Lets (reusable design patterns for collaboration engineering) for shared understanding in future research.

Cultural Influences on Collaborative Work in Software Engineering Teams

International business activities increasingly lead to the formation of multicultural teams that work together as project teams, for a certain time both at a site as well as in virtual teams. Despite the modern conception of many companies that multicultural composite teams are more productive due to various perspectives and work styles, the ignorance and disrespect of these differences in work styles and perspectives can lead to misunderstanding and loss of productivity. In this paper, we report our findings from a systematic literature review that analyzes previous research on cross-cultural software engineering, to identify potential impacts of national cultural factors on collaborative approaches and behavior in software engineering teams. We discuss the current emerging state of knowledge and point out directions for advancing the understanding of cultural influences in this domain to lay the foundation for better collaboration design for cross-cultural software

Das TANDEM-Konzept zur Unterstützung des Wissenstransfers in altersdiversen Arbeitsgruppen

Um eine nachhaltige Sicherung von Erfahrungswissen auch uber das Ausscheiden wertvoller Erfahrungstrager hinweg zu gewahrleisten, muss der Wissenstransfer zwischen Experten und Novizen im Arbeitskontext systematisch unterstutzt werden. In diesem Beitrag werden Erkenntnisse aus einer Fallstudie zur Pilotierung eines Wissenstransferprozesses in einem Grosunternehmen der deutschen Automobilbranche vorgestellt. In dem TANDEM-Pilotprojekt wurde ein Workshopprozess fur altersgemischte Arbeitsgruppen entwickelt und erprobt, bei dem Wissen zu ausgewahlten, komplexen Arbeitsprozessen durch Experten und Novizen kollaborativ in Form von Schulungsmaterialien dokumentiert wird. Die Erkenntnisse leisten einen Beitrag zur Gestaltungsforschung fur wiederholbare Wissensmanagement-Gruppenprozesse. Wir zeigen auf, wie die im TANDEM-Workshopprozess eingesetzten Kollaborationstechniken dazu dienen, Herausforderungen im Wissenstransfer von Experten und Novizen zu begegnen und heterogene Arbeitsgruppen erfolgreicher zu machen. Dieser Beitrag gibt Praktikern einen Musterprozess zur Unterstutzung des Wissenstransfers in altersdiversen Arbeitsgruppen an die Hand.

Collaborative elaboration of early innovation ideas

Summary Web-based innovation platforms (WBIP) are common tools for the integration of customers and other external stakeholders into the product and service innovation processes of companies. WBIP of many large companies are very successful in generating many ideas. This leads to WBIP operators drowning in lots of possibly creative and high potential ideas, which are difficult to screen. Therefore, this paper suggests a collaboration process allowing customers to participate collaboratively in the elaboration of self-selected ideas. The collaboration process has been developed following the collaboration process design approach and was designed to be implemented on WBIP.

Collaboration among Crowdsourcees: Towards a Design Theory for Collaboration Process Design

Crowdsourcing is used for collaborative problem solving in different domains. The key to optimal solutions is mostly found by collaboration among the crowdsourcees. The current state of research on this field addresses this topic mainly with an explorative focus on a specific domain, such as idea contests. We gather and analyze the contributions from the different domains on collaboration in crowdsourcing. We present a framework for a general collaboration process model for crowdsourcing. To derive this framework, we conducted a literature review and set up a database, which assigns the literature to the process steps that we identified from interaction patterns in the literature. The framework considers phases before and after the collaboration among crowdsourcees and includes relevant activities that can influence the collaboration process. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the interaction among crowdsourcees and provides crowdsourcers with grounding for the informed design of effective collaborative crowdsourcing processes.

Wissenstransfer in altersgemischten Team: Das TANDEMWorkshopkonzept

Wissen ist in einem sich immer schneller wandelnden Umfeld zur zentralen erfolgskritischen Ressource fur viele Organisationen geworden (Madhoushi und Sadati 2010; Sawhney und Prandelli 2000). Das notwendige Wissen fur Arbeitsprozesse und Innovationen wird durch technologischen Fortschritt immer vielfaltiger und komplexer (DeLong 2004). Oft hangt die erfolgreiche Durchfuhrung technologiegetriebener Arbeitsprozesse masgeblich von der Expertise einzelner Wissenstrager ab. Verlassen diese Personen das Unternehmen oder stehen aus anderen Grunden nicht zur Verfugung, sind diese Prozesse gefahrdet. Nur wenn es gelingt, Wissen in der Organisation zu bewahren, Wissensaustausch zwischen Mitarbeitern zu unterstutzen, und systematisch neues Wissen zu generieren, bleiben Organisationen innovations- und wettbewerbsfahig.

Collaborative Idea Elaboration on Web-Based Ideation Platforms

In recent years many companies have started integrating their customers into product and service development processes. This phenomenon is known as Open Innovation (OI). In OI research, especially the integration of customers into the early stages of product or service innovation has caught a lot of attention in theory and practice. Especially since the Internet as a simple way to communicate with a broad audito- rium allows new forms of customer integration. Web-based innovation platforms (WBIP) for implementing Virtual Idea Communities or online Idea Competitions now allow all customers to share their insights, opinions and ideas regarding a product with the manufacturer or other customers.Although WBIPs rely on customers to exchange their views, needs and opinions regarding the products, only few of them offer a structured process that guides them through the generation and elaboration process in a collaborative manner. The next important step in the evolution of WBIP should focus on the design of the platform to ideally support contributors in generating good ideas. The success of collaborative approaches to problem solving and creativity suggests using structured collaboration on WBIP.This paper develops a structured process to support groups of people in the collaborative elaboration of their ideas. The process goal is enhancing an initial idea into the description of a relevant problem and a possible solution to this problem. The research was guided by the following research question: 1. How can the idea elaboration in WBIP be improved by a repeatable collaboration process?