University of Innsbruck School of Management Information Systems

Identifying Collaboration Know-How from Action Patterns in Distributed Teams

SECOND INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON DATA-DRIVEN PROCESS DISCOVERY AND ANALYSIS

SIMPDA 2012 Campione dItalia, Italy

Isabella Seeber, Ronald Maier

source: peaksalesrecruiting.com
University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber
2

Driving team performance through collaboration

Know-how describes knowledge about procedures (Garud, 1997) Collaboration know-how describes how a team coordinates and integrates its actions to work with members of the team (Majchrzak et al. 2005) how to structure task how to agree on goals how to assign responsibilities

source: mosaik.co.at
University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber
3

Understand collaboration know-how from UGC

It is important to understand how people actually behave and use technology in groups (Andriessen,

2002)
Collaboration software allows gathering user generated content Identify patterns of collaboration comprising generating ideas, reducing ideas, clarifying ideas, organizing concepts, evaluating concepts, and building shared understanding (de Vreede and
source: telegraph.wisecodes.com
University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber

Briggs 2009)
4

ThinkLet/ActionPattern I Conceptual Model I Case Example I Outlook

How can we identify collaboration patterns with processmining techniques from communication logs gathered in collaborative settings?

University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber

ThinkLet OnePage / Action Pattern

Choose this thinkLet
to generate a few (less than 80 or so) comments on one topic when 5 or fewer people will brainstorm together when 6 or more people will brainstorm for fewer than 10 minutes []

Input: the brainstorming question Output: a set of comments in response to a brainstorming question or prompt Steps:
Make sure the participants understand the brainstorming question or prompt. Say this: If you have any questions with respect to the brainstorming question or assignment, please speak up. If necessary, facilitate a verbal discussion to address any understanding difficulties. If necessary, re-formulate the question or prompt. Inform the participants of time limits, if any. Let the participants contribute comments until they run out of ideas
6

University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber

Coding Schema Example

Person Reese Robin

Time

Content How about a wiki-like approach Yeah, I assume you have to use a system on top which then links to the specific documentation Good, idea but a wiki takes a lot of time How should we go on?

Action proposeOption supportOption

3:05
3:05

Skyler Robin Reese

University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber

2:51 3:10 3:12

supportOption ChallengeOption AskOption

We should discuss all together AnswerOption

7

Conceptual model

University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber

Case Example Laboratory Experiment investigating collaborative writing 6 teams with 3 members Task: write a report on how to improve knowledge management in a fictional organization Treatment group: task description and structured description how to run through the collaboration activities Control group: task description plus a list of steps to fulfill the task that is brainstorm, converge, write and evaluate
9

University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber

Brainstorming in selected teams

Control groups:

Treatment group:

University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber

10

Interpretation & Conclusion The treatment group adopted collaboration facilitation of the OnePage thinkLet Further analysis showed that changes in collaboration patterns can be visualized Limits in interpretation: e.g., switch from generate to converge Coordination problems impact team performance negatively facilitate teams with collaboration knowhow in the form of action patterns
University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber
11

Outlook

Using social network analysis to drive understanding of dynamic role differentiation in teams Adapt coding schemes to benefit from automated process-mining From describing collaboration behavior via understanding collaboration patterns to diagnosing collaboration know-how and facilitation improving team performance

University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber

12

Contact
Isabella Seeber isabella.seeber@uibk.ac.at
University of Innsbruck School of Management Information Systems I Universittsstrae 15 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

Thank you for your attention!

University of Innsbruck Isabella Seeber