A design approach to team coordination

Abstract

Team coordination over long time scales has been analyzed through two dominant perspectives: the contingency approach and the discursive approach. While they produced extensive theoretical contributions, these two perspectives are not well-suited to understand team coordination in changing and uncertain situations such as innovation projects. In this paper, we propose a design approach to coordination, which we define as the joint inquiry and construction by teams of their common ground. We instantiated our conceptual model into a tool called the Team Alignment Map, which allows team members to design their interdependencies. We evaluated the effectiveness of the tool within 22 innovation projects in two different settings. Our findings suggest that the tool facilitated the creation of shared understanding between team members, and allowed them to coordinate flexibly and welcome the shifting requirements of their projects. These findings suggest that conceptualizing coordination as a design process is well-suited to innovation projects.

Data Product Canvas: A Visual Inquiry Tool Supporting Data Product Design

“…Visual inquiry tools help organizations navigate a wicked and difficult strategic management problem through providing a shared and framed design space where practitioners can brainstorm together [27]. Some best-known examples are the BMC [10], Value Proposition Canvas [18] and Team Alignment Map [29]. More specifically, these tools allow an alternative way to handle complex management issues by building prototypes that are iteratively improved to capture all design requirements [27].…”