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Messy Talk in Virtual Teams: Achieving Knowledge Synthesis through Shared Visualizations
Engineering teams collaborating in virtual environments face many technical, social, and cultural challenges. In this paper we focus on distributed teams making joint unanticipated discoveries in virtual environments. We operationalize a definition of “messy talk” as a process in which teams mutually discover issues, critically engage in clarifying and finding solutions to the discovered issues, exchange their knowledge, and resolve the issue. Can globally distributed teams use messy talk via virtual communication technology? We analyzed the interactions of four distributed student teams collaborating on a complex design and planning project using building information models (BIMs) and the cyber-enabled global research infrastructure for design (CyberGRID), a virtual world specifically developed for collaborative work. Their interactions exhibited all four elements of messy talk, even though resolution was the least common. Virtual worlds support real-time joint problem solving by (1) providing affordances for talk mediated by shared visualizations, (2) supporting team perceptions of building information models that are mutable, and (3) allowing transformations of those models while people were together in real time. Our findings suggest that distributed team collaboration requires technologies that support messy talk—and iterative trial and error—for complex multidimensional problems.
Journal of Management Engineering, January 2015, DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000301)
Interpretive Flexibility and the Price of Documentation
Design and construction are rooted in layers of historical work practices that enable temporary teams of experts to quickly establish collaborative routines. However, work practices, drawing sets and written specifications that functioned well in the 2D environment may constrain teams working in 3D, and shape the ways they generate and discuss alternative solutions to problem. In this paper we present a model that allows for the analysis of the dimensions of interpretive flexibility, malleability, and documentation across the project process. We use qualitative ethnographic observations of three different building projects using BIM over a five-year period and 70 interviews of architects, engineers and builders across the USA. For the experts on these teams, documents with “interpretive flexibility,” the degree to which documents can be read in multiple settings, can be generative, helping people “see” creative solutions to design problems within such documents. However, interpretive flexibility is also a liability at other points in the construction process, because of the possibility for multiple interpretations to cause confusion and costly rework. Three-dimensional models and data support collaborative conversations that are good for the discovery of problems, but the technology is no replacement for dialog amongst team members. We find that interpretive flexibility is reduced by 3D, and this reduces the ability for teams to generate solutions to discovered problems. As a basis for issue and conflict discovery, BIM acts as a site for conversation, but stops short of supporting exchanges around solution generation. Once design and construction teams develop solutions and alternatives, BIM then serves another useful role in helping to test and explore these solutions. In this way, BIM-based information exchange does not replace the need for expert interaction on design and construction projects, but enhances these interactions.
Dossick, Carrie Sturts and Gina Neff. “Interpretive Flexibility and the Price of Documentation,” Proceedings of the Engineering Project Organizations Conference, Winter Park, CO, July, 10pp.
Winner, Engineering Project Organization Society 2014 Best Paper Award
Constructing Teams: Adapting Practices and Routines for Collaboration Through BIM
The recent introduction of Building Information Modeling to design and construction has challenged teams to adjust work at all levels from project delivery strategies to day-to-day work practices. In this paper, we use ethnographic methods to study teamwork routines and practices as they adapt to new Building Information technologies. This paper leverages our understanding of conflicting obligations on construction project teams and the need for joint-problem solving messy talk to extend theories of routine adaptations and practice work-arounds, collectively called reconfiguration when team needs are misaligned with technology affordances. In this analysis, leadership that provides flexibility and distributed authority enables teams to reconfigure routines and practices and hack their tools. This reconfiguration processes itself has both direct and broad social outcomes: 1) the immediate team buy-in on new work processes as well as 2) longer term team culture building that enables messy talk engagement and orientation to project goals.
Neff, Gina and Carrie Sturts Dossick. “Constructing Teams: Adapting Practices and Routines for Collaboration Through BIM,” Proceedings of the Engineering Project Organizations Conference, Winter Park, CO, July, 15pp.