Creating High-Tech Teams
Practical guidance on work performance and technology
Clint Bowers, Eduardo Salas, Florian Jentsch (Bowers, Salas et al. 2006)
Groupware, Group Dynamics and Team Performance, (Driskell and Salas 2005)
· groupware = software that supports group performance
o traditional emphasis one “ware” and not on “group”
· current status
o email: 57mi users in 2002 (Fallows 02), but groupware has fallen short of achieving its potential… why?
o lack of emphasis on group issues: disconnect between groupware research (CS, mngt, eng) and team performance research (psych, social stuff)
o software dev. Often relies on the intuition of the coder/soft. Eng. => need HF (Grundin 94)
· supporting distributed team collaboration
o challenges: different types of teams, different tasks and communication capabilities
o teamwork dimensions: first (Fleishman & Zaccaro 92) orientation (exchanging information), coordination (coordination and sequencing of activities), monitoring (performance monitoring and error correction) and motivational (maintenance of norms, resolving conflicts)
o current process dimensions:
§ adaptability (react to external info through flexibility and resource reallocation)
§ shared SA (shared knowledge of the team’s internal and external environment)=> correlated with performance (Mathieu, Heffner, Goodwin, Salas & Cannon-Bowers 00, Thomson & Coovert 03)
§ performance monitoring and feedback (give, seek and receive feedback)=>McIntyre&Salas 95
§ team management (direct and coordinate task activities, assign tasks, plan, organize and motivate other team members)
§ interpersonal relations (optimize interpersonal relations by resolving conflicts, use of cooperation and building morale)
§ coordination (organize team resources, activities and responses to ensure complete and timely task completion)
§ communication (efficient information exchange)
§ decision making (integrate/pool information, identify alternatives select solutions and evaluate consequences)
o Input: groupware, Process ^, Output: Team Performance
o Moderators: types of distributed environment, task and temporal factors
Enabling team decision making, (Kleij and Schraagen 2006)
· 1996: a Belgian C130 crashed with 40ppl onboard after colliding with birds: the ATC thought that only the crew was onboard, so the firefighters took longer than normal to rescue (Inspectie Brandweerzorg en Rampenbestrijding 97)
· Problems that affect team decision making
o Group biases and errors: (Houghton, Simon, Aquino & Goldbert 00): teams DM is biased: ex. Law of small number, sample bias, automation bias (Mosier, Skitka, Heers & Burdick 1998)
o Process losses: larger groups possess a greater range of abilities, knowledge and skills (Shaw 81), and yet as the group size increases process losses become apparent (Steiner 72)… laboratory studies have shown that often groups generate about half as many ideas as individuals, and the quality of the ideas is not higher, and the link was made with the wait (the speaker must finish presenting) that one has before being able to express the new idea (Diel & Stroebe 87, 91)
· Aiding team decision making
o Group decision support systems (GDSS): systems that support a group of people engaged in a decision-related process (Finlay 89)
§ Example: naval CIS (command information system) (Rasker & van der Kleij 00)
o Process facilitation (Dennis&Wixom 02): an entity devoted to facilitate interactions is appreciated
· Setting for group decision support
o Electronic meeting rooms (Nunamaker 95)
o Non-collocated group decision making
o Synchronous vs. Asynchronous group decision support
· Implications for practice
o GDSSs can overcome biases and errors and reduce process losses
o Ideal situation to use GSS is face-to-face
o Decision making should be under the guidance of a facilitator
o Distributed teams need to have access to face-to-face meetings or telecom to augment text based interactions
o If verbal com. is impossible, interactive and synchronous communication is the next best thing at the initial phases of the task when ideas are generated
o Take into account that teams learn and gain experience in using the tools
Cognition, teams, and team cognition: memory actions and memory failures in distributed environments, (Fiore, Cuevas et al. 2006)
· Team cognition (Salas & Fiore 04): increasingly common ideas between cognitive and organizational sciences
o Memory research can be used to understand team processes and performance in complex environments, team opacity, memory failure and prospective memory
· Team opacity in a distributed coordination space
o Distributed coordination space (a) sociocognitive factors from group dynamics (b) artificial components (c) dynamic processes of distributed team interactions
o Limits on interactions due to collocation are set by the technological tools
o Team opacity is the increased level of abstraction (going to a data-lean, primarily cognitive environment) and artificiality forced on the team members (Fiore 03)
o Team opacity in the memory framework: the manner in which the context of interacting in a distributed environment affect the team processes and performance
· Memory actions and memory failures in complex operational environments
o Multimodal integration of inputs, but lacking the paralinguistic cues
o Memory failure = failures occurring in the context of teams and team task rather than larger failures at an organizational level
o Must consider distal and proximal causes of failures => goals are (1) classification of memory failures (2) taxonomy of causes of memory failure (3) set of guidelines for system designer
· Memory failures in complex operational environments
o Most research on memory failure are lab based, but recently shifted to everyday memory failures
o Prospective memory (remembering to do something in the future) vs. retrospective memory (remembering past events)
o Applied research in aviation domain, shows that prospective memory failure is the cause of more than 10% of all reported errors (Endsley 99), 50% of fatal accidents, and 11% of loss of SA (??)
· Prospective memory
o 2 processes drive successful memory execution: conceptual (directed search) and perceptual (noticing)
· Memory failures framework
o Exogenous: Environment, technology and Endogenous:personnel (proximal/distal)
· Implication for training, system design and performance
Exploration and context in communication analysis, (Morin and Albinsson 2006)
· communication is important to sync multiple resources and exchange plans and procedures
o communication analysis generates tons of data (Woods 93), transcription is tedious (Cooke 94)
o (Fisher & Sanderson 96): solution: visual abstract representation of audio data
o Need for contextual information
o Proposed solution: (a) reconstruction (b) exploration
§ Reconstruction: essentially a replay system with tons of log data
§ Exploration: rendering of the model
o MIND: the tool to do all that
· Distribution and complexity
· Command and Control: “the establishment of common intent to achieve coordinated action (Pigeau&McCann 00)
o Explicit vs. implicit intent
· Communication
o What must be communicated before and during a mission, what can be managed locally and what needs to inferred from the context
· Context: very important, obviously
· Reconstruction and Exploration
o Methodology: domain analysis->modeling->instrumentation->data collection-> presentation
· MIND: tool description (linked histograms) & Case study: accident reconstruction scenario in Sweden
References:
Bowers, C. A., E. Salas, et al. (2006). Creating high-tech teams : practical guidance on work performance and technology. Washington, DC, American Psychological Association.
Driskell, J. E. and E. Salas (2005). Groupware, Group Dynamics, and Team Performance. Creating High-Tech Teams: Practical Guidance on Work Performance and Technology. C. Bowers, E. Salas and F. Jentsch, American Psychology Association: 11-34.
Fiore, S. M., H. M. Cuevas, et al. (2006). Cognition, teams, and team cognition: memory actions and memory failures in distributed environments. Creating High-Tech Teams. C. A. Bowers, E. Salas and F. Jentsch. Washington DC, American Psychological Association: 71-87.
Kleij, R. V. D. and J. M. Schraagen (2006). Enabling Team Decision Making. Creating High-Tech Teams. C. Bowers, E. Salas and F. Jentsch: 35-50.
Morin, M. and Albinsson (2006). Exploration and Context in Communication Analysis. Creating High-Tech Teams. C. Bowers, E. Salas and F. Jentsch. Washington DC, American Psychological Association: 89-112.