Design approaches for the introduction and use of collaboration platforms—two SME case studies from the IT industry

Abstract

The introduction and use of collaboration platforms to support collaboration in teams and in the organization is a complex socio-technical design task for companies. In the CollaboTeam project, two medium-sized companies in the IT industry were accompanied in the introduction of collaboration platforms to improve team and project work. It was investigated which strategies and measures the companies used to be able to cope with the work design requirement. This paper presents the model for working with collaboration platforms and presents concrete design measures from the two IT case studies. The model includes three levels: Strategy, where goals for the use of collaboration platforms are defined; Analysis, where current collaboration in work systems are examined and design needs are derived; and the Design level, which is the focus of this paper and where design measures are systematized into six topics. N = 21 guided interviews with managers and employees of SMEs were evaluated by content analysis.