This paper describes exploratory research regarding leadership and communication within undergraduate engineering design teams. The case study was performed on student design projects of one and two semester duration to begin to assess the impact of project length on leadership and communication within the design teams. Data was collected using a survey that was given to the participants in three capstone design projects in Clemson University’s senior design course. The survey was administered within one month of course and project completion. While there were differences in the communication and leadership patterns between the teams, there were other possible influences beyond the project length such as team size and organization, organizational and geographic distribution, and the nature of the product. As a result, further research is proposed to study leadership and communication structures within undergraduate teams and multi-team systems (MTS).

The purpose of this study is to establish a protocol capable of identifying functional leadership behaviors in engineering design teams. The protocol is developed from a literature review that includes general leadership theory and research performed on collaborative design teams. Three different raters applied the leadership protocol to a video recording of a graduate student team performing a function structure modeling activity. The results of the study demonstrate that the protocol has a high amount of intra-rater agreement and an acceptable level of interrater reliability. Additionally, the pilot study revealed that clarification and refinement of the protocol with respect to leader/follower behaviors can improve rater agreement. Finally, changes to the protocol are proposed to map leadership behaviors to the design space the team is working in and the design activities that the team is performing.