Digi­tal Teams

Brief descrip­ti­on

The over­all objec­ti­ve of the pro­ject is to coun­ter­act the rural exodus in Ger­ma­ny by impro­ving the employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for know­ledge workers in rural are­as. This goal is to be achie­ved by offe­ring know­ledge workers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do their work not only at a per­ma­nent work­place in a lar­ge city, but also to car­ry out this acti­vi­ty in a rural regi­on, for exam­p­le at home. For this pur­po­se, the pro­ject will deve­lop an open eco­sys­tem plat­form with the inte­gra­ti­on of smart ser­vices, which enables the work of so-cal­led dis­tri­bu­ted teams (VT). A Dis­tri­bu­ted Team is cha­rac­te­ri­zed by the fact that its mem­bers work tog­e­ther from dif­fe­rent loca­ti­ons. In this pro­ject we are deal­ing with Dis­tri­bu­ted Teams with digi­tal­ly sup­port­ed col­la­bo­ra­ti­on, also cal­led "digi­tal teams".

In the pro­ject, ITA is spe­ci­fi­cal­ly con­cer­ned with the ergo­no­mic sup­port of the pro­ject plan: The suc­cessful work of dis­tri­bu­ted teams is not only ensu­red by a purely tech­ni­cal sup­port, but also by an ergo­no­mic design of the tech­no­lo­gy used and the orga­ni­sa­ti­on of the coope­ra­ti­on. This con­cerns the for­ma­ti­on of a team, the buil­ding of trust, the work moti­va­ti­on and satis­fac­tion of the team mem­bers, the effec­ti­ve­ness of lea­der­ship, the coope­ra­ti­on within the team and neces­sa­ry com­pe­tence deve­lo­p­ment pro­ces­ses. Fur­ther­mo­re, depen­ding on the type of team, the inte­gra­ti­on into the orga­niza­ti­on of the com­pa­ny to which the team belongs must be desi­gned: Ques­ti­ons such as iden­ti­fi­ca­ti­on with the orga­niza­ti­on, exch­an­ge with col­le­agues who are not part of the team, know­ledge about infor­ma­ti­on or chan­ges in the orga­niza­ti­on or regu­lar exch­an­ge with supe­ri­ors play a role here. The task of the ITA is thus to inte­gra­te the occu­pa­tio­nal sci­ence per­spec­ti­ve into the over­all pro­ject and to take the­se design com­pon­ents into account in the con­cep­ti­on of the inten­ded eco­sys­tem plat­form, its test­ing and eva­lua­ti­on.

Metho­do­lo­gi­cal approach

Pri­or to the deve­lo­p­ment of the eco­sys­tem plat­form, a com­pre­hen­si­ve ana­ly­sis (lite­ra­tu­re rese­arch, road­shows, user sur­vey) will iden­ti­fy requi­re­ments that must be taken into account when desig­ning the plat­form. The­se requi­re­ments will signi­fi­cant­ly deter­mi­ne the deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form. In the cour­se of this, agi­le tech­ni­ques (e.g. Design Thin­king, Scrum) will be used. After an initi­al deve­lo­p­ment pha­se, the plat­form will be tes­ted in prac­ti­ce by appli­ca­ti­on part­ners who will be sel­ec­ted on the basis of a sci­en­ti­fi­cal­ly based case stu­dy design. This is to ensu­re that a varie­ty of dif­fe­rent forms of digi­tal teams are repre­sen­ted and that com­pre­hen­si­ve fin­dings are obtai­ned accor­din­gly. The plat­form will be eva­lua­ted using dif­fe­rent approa­ches of clas­si­cal social rese­arch and will be fur­ther deve­lo­ped during the cour­se of the pro­ject. In addi­ti­on to gui­de­line-based inter­views and stan­dar­di­sed sur­veys (e.g. dif­fe­rent ques­ti­on­n­aires such as team cli­ma­te, job satis­fac­tion, moti­va­ti­on) in work­shop sequen­ces, data will be ana­ly­sed that are available through the plat­form to be deve­lo­ped and thus on the basis of net­work­ed sys­tems. The­se will enable state­ments to be made about the qua­li­ty of the teams' work over a lon­ger peri­od of time (e.g. regar­ding pro­duc­ti­vi­ty, user beha­viour, work tech­ni­ques).

More infor­ma­ti­on about the pro­ject will be available soon at www​.digi​ta​le​-teams​.de