Telepresence in concurrent lifecycle design and construction

Construction projects usually involve transient ‘virtual organisations’ made up of members of a project team (involving several disparate disciplines) working together on the design and construction of a facility. Team members are often non-co-located, particularly at the early stages of the design process, and tend to work independently while taking decisions that affect others. The adoption of concurrent engineering principles by the construction industry is increasingly being seen as vital for reducing the problems posed by the industry's fragmentation, and enhancing its competitiveness. An important aspect of concurrent engineering in construction is the need for an effective communications infrastructure able to transmit project information between members of the project team and across all stages in the constructed facility's lifecycle. This paper describes the development of such a communications infrastructure that is based on the concept of Telepresence. The intention is to create a persistent space to support interaction between project personnel throughout the design and construction phases of projects. The paper first highlights the key communications issues that need to be addressed, introduces ‘Telepresence’ and describes an initial prototype system. The approach being adopted in the development of an advanced Telepresence environment for construction project teams is also presented. The Telepresence environment is intended to help people who cannot be together to work together.     

From process improvement to people improvement: enabling learning in software development

The importance of people factors for the success of software development is commonly accepted, because the success of a software project is above all determined by having the right people on the right place at the right time. As software development is a knowledge intensive industry; the ‘quality’ of developers is primarily determined by their knowledge and skills. This paper presents a conceptual model of nine ‘learning enablers’ to facilitate learning in software projects. These enablers help identifying whether individual and/or organisational learning is facilitated. The main question addressed in this paper is: ‘Which factors enable learning in software projects and to what extent?’     

Identity ambiguity and the promises and practices of hybrid e-HRM project teams

The role of IS project team identity work in the enactment of day-to-day relationships with their internal clients is under-researched. We address this gap by examining the identity work undertaken by an electronic human resource management (e-HRM) ‘hybrid’ project team engaged in an enterprise-wide IS implementation for their multi-national organisation. Utilising social identity theory, we identify three distinctive, interrelated dimensions of project team identity work (project team management, team ‘value propositions’ (promises) and the team’s ‘knowledge practice’). We reveal how dissonance between two perspectives of e-HRM project identity work (clients’ expected norms of project team’s service and project team’s expected norms of themselves) results in identity ambiguity. Our research contributions are to identity studies in the IS project management, HR and hybrid literatures and to managerial practice by challenging the assumption that hybrid experts are the panacea for problems associated with IS projects.     

Organizing Individual and Collective Creativity: Flying in the Face of Creativity Clichés

The growing complexity of problems requires collective solutions to produce creative outcomes. Organizational theory on creativity has been extensively developed in recent decades, but two problematic issues remain. First, no current comprehensive model explains the development of collective creativity. Second, no empirical research has been conducted on the process of theory dissemination and its relevance within the managerial community. This paper provides evidence which can inform the design of collective creative projects within organizations, flying in the face of some managerial clichés. We design a research project which enables managerial sensemaking to emerge and which proposes a comprehensive approach to the design of team creativity. From a research design involving 24 managers and 98 eleven‐person groups, results confirm that creativity is not only about creative genius, and design for creativity is not a matter of linear correlation but implies a more sophisticated and integrative approach according to which individual creative skills, team dynamics and organizational solutions interact with each other to produce a collective creative performance.     

‘You can dance your prototype if you like’: independent filmmakers adapting the hackathon

Hackathon-style events are increasingly used to facilitate cross-disciplinary learning and innovation in the media industries. Based on an observational study of a hackathon organized as part of the film festival Nordic Panorama (NP) we analyse the challenges in using the hackathon format to facilitate cross-disciplinary learning and innovation for filmmakers, developers and designers. We find that many participants experienced frustrations resulting from a lack of programming skills and their expectation that the hackathon should result in ‘something digital’. Additionally, ideals for authorship embedded in the working cultures of film and TV professionals impeded the team’s ability to involve all participants on an equal footing. As implications for future hackathons we suggest organizers should consider using tools for end-user development and generative toolkits to facilitate digital making and collaborative learning. We also suggest similar events should avoid including project owners if the group work is based on existing projects.     

Virtual organizational learning in open source software development projects

We studied virtual organizational learning in open source software (OSS) development projects. Specifically, our research focused on learning effects of OSS projects and the factors that affect the learning process. The number and percentage of resolved bugs and bug resolution time of 118 SourceForge.net OSS projects were used to measure the learning effects. Projects were characterized by project type, number and experience of developers, number of bugs, and bug resolution time. Our results provided evidence of virtual organizational learning in OSS development projects and support for several factors as determinants of performance. Team size was a significant predictor, with mid-sized project teams functioning best. Teams of three to seven developers exhibited the highest efficiency over time and teams of eight to 15 produced the lowest mean time for bug resolution. Increasing the percentage of bugs assigned to specific developers or boosting developer participation in other OSS projects also improved performance. Furthermore, project type introduced variability in project team performance.     

Inside the Windows security push

The Microsoft Windows development team spent two months in 2002 analyzing product design, code, and documentation to fix security issues. The results of this security push include a new process and several lessons learned for future projects.     

New product development team intelligence: Antecedents and consequences

Our study investigated the effect of team knowledge on new product development (NPD). By investigating 207 NPD projects, we found that the declarative and procedural knowledge of the team and their use of IT had a positive influence on the team's knowledge base; and that the higher the functional diversity of the project team, the greater their overall knowledge. We also found that team knowledge positively impacted new product creativity and success in the market place.     

A model for software rework reduction through a combination of anomaly metrics

Analysis of anomalies reported during testing of a project can tell a lot about how well the processes and products work. Still, organizations rarely use anomaly reports for more than progress tracking although projects commonly spend a significant part of the development time on finding and correcting faults. This paper presents an anomaly metrics model that organizations can use for identifying improvements in the development process, i.e. to reduce the cost and lead-time spent on rework-related activities and to improve the quality of the delivered product. The model is the result of a four year research project performed at Ericsson.     

Action research in user-centred product development

Technological development and increased international competition have imposed a significant burden on the product development function of many companies. The growing complexity of products demands a larger product development team with people having various competencies. Simultaneously the importance of good quality, usability and customisation of products is growing, and many companies want to involve customers and users directly in the development work. Both the complexity and quality demand new ways of working that support collaboration between people with various competencies, interests and responsibilities both inside and outside the company. This paper reports experiences from using action research to introduce new user-centred work practices in two commercial product development projects. The interventions varied. In the first project it was found rewarding to engage customers and users in workshops based on participatory inquiry and collaborative design. The design process was iterative and the workshops took place several times involving concept through detailed design. In the second project, new design representations are introduced. The experiences highlight the importance of creating and reifying insights in design representations and using these to both support collaboration, and create continuity in the project. The paper ends with a discussion of scientific rigor in action research and what the new work practices imply for the development team.     

Measuring and Enabling Learning Behaviour in Product Innovation Processes

It is generally acknowledged that innovation is one of the most important predictors of firm success or failure. Successful innovation processes require creating new organizational capabilities to handle the external pressure for new products and processes (fast, good and at low costs), and the internal pressure for increased efficiency and effectiveness. Under these circumstances ‘learning’ is an important issue and the increased interest for topics such as knowledge management, organizational learning and continuous improvement illustrates its relevance. Within the CIMA (Continuous Improvement in Global Product Innovation Management) research project (CIMA‐ESPRIT 26056) a methodology has been developed to help companies to stimulate learning behaviour of individuals and teams in product innovation processes. By studying learning behaviour in 140 product innovation projects in 70 companies in six countries, a seemingly valid and reliable scale for measuring learning behaviour has been developed. In addition, managerial activities and decisions that are predictive for improving learning behaviour have been identified.     

Functional Diversity,Absorptive Capability and Product Success: The Moderating Role of Project Complexity in New Product Development Teams

Absorptive capability appears to be an appealing concept in the technology and innovation management literature. Though absorptive capability attracts researchers from a variety of disciplines, team‐level empirical research on it is scant. In this study, we operationalized team absorptive capability as a multidimensional construct involving knowledge acquisition, assimilation and exploitation. This study also explores the moderating effect of project complexity between team absorptive capability and new product success. In studying the data from 239 new product development projects using partial least squares structural equation modelling, we found that team functional diversity is a significant determinant of team absorptive capability. Moreover, regarding the relationships between team absorptive capability and new product success, we uncovered that (i) new product success is dependent on the ability to understand the acquired knowledge, and (ii) the teams appear to be more cautious in putting the assimilated knowledge into practice to the extent that project complexity increases.     

Developing a dynamic project learning and cross‐project learning capability: synthesizing two perspectives

Driven by the complexity of new products and services, project work has become increasingly common in all types of organizations. However, research on project learning suggests that often project teams do not meet their stated objectives and, moreover, there is limited organizational learning from the experiences of project work. We use the dynamic capabilities framework to argue that building a dynamic project learning capability is useful for organizations that make extensive use of projects. We use both survey and interview data to discuss the key ways in which such a dynamic capability can be built. Our survey data demonstrate the importance of documenting project learning, but our interview data show that teams are often remiss at documenting their learning. The results from the two different approaches are synthesized using Boland & Tenkasi’s notions of perspective‐making and perspective‐taking. Importantly, combining the results from the two sets of data suggests that organizations need to emphasize the benefits from project reviews and documentation and explore ways in which the documents produced can be made more useful as boundary objects to encourage the sharing of learning across projects.     

Marketing Activities to Support ‘Moderately Novel’ Product Innovation: Insights from the Chemical Industry

Scholars often follow a contingency approach to study which marketing activities are suitable for a particular type of product innovation project, thereby making a distinction between incremental and radical innovation only. ‘Moderately novel’ projects, which have intermediate levels of newness, have therefore not been given due attention. This paper focuses on market intelligence generation and the creation of cross‐functional linkages as marketing activities that are important in the context of moderately novel product innovation. In addition, the organizational position of the marketers involved in these activities is dealt with. Based on the analysis of four successful projects in the chemical industry, we argue, firstly, that moderately novel innovation projects have their own particular sets of marketing practices and, secondly, that differences exist between projects aiming at a new market segment and projects in which novelty is not related to market segment but to other market dimensions. These differences are especially salient in early project phases. These findings are pertinent to research on the role of marketers in product innovation, and to the study of organizational ambidexterity.     

Action Planning for New Product Development Projects

Two empirical studies are presented to show how experienced project leaders execute New Product Development (NPD) projects. In the first study we interviewed project leaders from four different design firms. We discovered that inside realistic NPD projects the NPD activities seldom occur in the same order as they are described in the NPD literature. Some activities are omitted, some activities are run in parallel and some even have a seemingly illogical timing. The reasons for these ‘strange’ patterns are usually project‐specific. The NPD project leaders distinguish four types of NPD projects. On the one hand, familiar (client well known and/or standard technology and/or re‐design) or non‐familiar projects (new client and/or new technology and/or innovative design), and on the other hand, the complexity of the product (simple versus complex), and they plan their NPD projects differently according to those four types. For instance, within simple and familiar projects they omit more NPD activities than in projects with a more complex and new nature. In the second empirical study we did a matched pairing study (finding NPD projects which would match each of the four types). This time we interviewed experienced project leaders from different companies, because they are probably more familiar with only one type of NPD project. We found a minimal and a ‘regular’ NPD process. Projects on new products (the non‐familiar type) contain the most activities in the total project. Complex projects execute more activities in the first stages, and also different activities than in non‐complex projects. We also found that NPD project leaders adapt an opportunistic attitude towards carrying out activities in parallel in order to gain time.     

Blending bureaucratic and collaborative management styles to achieve control ambidexterity in IS projects

Managing information systems (IS) projects requires what we refer to as ‘control ambidexterity’, which is the use of different types of control to meet conflicting demands. This leads to the use of contrasting styles of IS project management and creates tensions in managerial practice, neither of which are well understood. We address this theoretical gap in our understanding based on an exploratory case study of an IS implementation project in the financial services industry. Adopting the lens of management styles as a meta-theoretical perspective, we sought to address two research questions: (1) Which management style(s) do IS project managers draw upon in practice and why? (2) What kinds of tensions result for IS project managers and team members from drawing upon contrasting management styles in combination – and how do IS project managers and team members deal with these tensions? Two contrasting styles of management emerged from our data – bureaucratic and collaborative – that are drawn upon by IS project managers to achieve control ambidexterity. Furthermore, drawing upon these two different styles in combination within the confines of a single project creates tensions. We explore these tensions and present an illustrative example of how IS project managers can deal with these tensions successfully in practice. Specifically, we find that they can be dealt with effectively by a tandem of two project managers who share responsibility for managing the IS project. The findings of this study have important implications for our understanding of control ambidexterity in IS projects.     

Concept for multidevelopment project and team organization of product and process generations

Large and middle-sized manufacturers need to carry out multiple development projects simultaneously to serve a variety of products to markets with different customer needs. The purpose of this article is to explore product development project and team organization with respect to technology and design transfer strategy among multiple development projects, as well as their impact on project integrity and performance. The focus is on the strategic and cross-functional integration of product and process generations with distinctive platforms and their derivative projects. First, this study proposes a concept of multilayer development project and team organization, which builds a creative environment through effective information sharing among and within the individual development projects and teams. Second, using analysis results on six product development projects at a large Japanese computer manufacturer, it is concluded that multilayer teams are effective in realizing project integrity through implementing inter- and intraproduct and process generation technology and design transfer strategy. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Learning Organization as Facilitator of Complex NPD Projects

With rapid technological and market changes, new product development (NPD) complexity is a significant issue that organizations continually face in their development projects. The inability to recognize and/or manage complexity can cause the best‐intentioned projects to fail. By creating a learning organization attuned to complexity and its management, however, companies are more likely to have the knowledge and skills essential to respond competently to the complexity frequently encountered in NPD projects. In this paper, we first define complexity in NPD and then examine organizational learning as it can assist in dealing with development complexity. Next, we report findings from an exploratory research study on organizational learning and its relationship to product development complexity. The study is based on 32 field interviews with NPD participants regarding their learning experiences in dealing with complexity; the transfer of project learning to other projects; and the factors that minimize/block the transfer of learning among projects. Based on our research, we advance several suggestions for implementing a learning organization designed specifically to capitalize on the experiences of development firms' efforts in dealing with complexity and its consequences.     

Boosting the confidence of new product development teams: The role of team boundary spanning,team size and functional diversity

In today's highly interconnected, uncertain and dynamic business environment, team boundary spanning has become an important determinant of the performance of new product development (NPD) projects. Despite the positive evidence supporting the use of boundary spanning activities by NPD teams, little is still known about how boundary spanning teams become high-performance teams. The current study advances research on this subject by examining the mediating effect of team potency on the relationship between team boundary spanning and new product performance, as well as the moderating effects of team size and functional diversity on the relationship between team boundary spanning and team potency. Data from a time-lagged survey study of 140 NPD projects found that team boundary spanning can promote team potency that, in turn, results in greater new product quality and new product creativity. The positive effect of team boundary spanning on team potency was found to be more pronounced for NPD teams of medium size and high levels of functional diversity.     

Managing Ambiguity in New Product Development Projects

Ambiguity, defined in this study as the existence of two or more interpretations of the same cue, is an essential component of ‘fuzziness’ in new product development (NPD) projects. In this paper, we present a model by which ambiguity in NPD projects can be classified and managed. The model has been developed grounded in case data from four NPD projects in companies making medical devices. Ambiguity is classified according to two axes: subjects of ambiguity and sources of ambiguity. Subjects of ambiguity include product, market, process and organizational resources. Sources of ambiguity include multiplicity, novelty, validity and reliability. Ambiguity can be managed by two means: reducing or sustaining it. If clarity is a main priority in the NPD project, reducing ambiguity is necessary and can be effectively achieved by applying the hypothetical‐deductive method. If novelty and flexibility are high project priorities, sustaining certain ambiguities can be useful. Managing ambiguity requires a constant harmonizing of the need for clarity and the need for novelty and flexibility.