Scrum methodologies that support cross-functional writing teams to develop polished increments of writing instead of lengthy drafts of documents stand to improve productivity and learning within... Show More

Scrum methodologies that support cross-functional writing teams to develop polished increments of writing instead of lengthy drafts of documents stand to improve productivity and learning within organizations. Scrum methodologies may be deployed in higher education as well as in nonacademic settings to achieve purposeful knowledge transfer across disciplines and across academic/industry borders. Key to scrum is an emphasis on productivity within fixed time frames, with productivity facilitated by learning that emerges in cross-functional teams. Higher education is similarly a domain in which productivity in fixed time frames takes the measure of student learning. Across the disciplines, scrum methodologies show promise for improving the quality of collaborative problem-solving in writing projects in college and at work.

Research in the ICT4D field implicates lack of user-centered design in the high rate of ICTD project failure. The field of user experience (UX) offers potentially fruitful approaches for... Show More

Research in the ICT4D field implicates lack of user-centered design in the high rate of ICTD project failure. The field of user experience (UX) offers potentially fruitful approaches for user-centered design. In the ICTD context, these principles and methods clash with the triple constraints of project management (time, scope and funding). This paper introduces the user persona from UX design as a powerful tool for considering the user's perspective within resource-constrained ICTD projects. Although personas appear simple, they introduce complex communicative affordances, pragmatic benefits, and risks to ICTD projects. A brief conclusion revisits the larger problem of ICTD project failure, and considers the potential role of personas in addressing this problem.

The study explores the technical and intercultural challenges involved in a Department of State (DoS)-funded collaborative research project between a Mid-Sized Regional Public University in the U.S.... Show More

The study explores the technical and intercultural challenges involved in a Department of State (DoS)-funded collaborative research project between a Mid-Sized Regional Public University in the U.S. and an International Research Institution in Pakistan. The collaborative research project on which the study is based is particularly significant as the groups from each institution face the central communication challenges that are the hallmark of distributed teams, namely physical separation, multiple organizations, and different time zones. This manuscript highlights the importance of intercultural factors in shaping the institutional relationships and examines expectations for collective responsibility in the given context.

Collaborative activities have become an important consideration of contemporary workspace design, and this is especially in software development companies as teams work to innovate products and... Show More

Collaborative activities have become an important consideration of contemporary workspace design, and this is especially in software development companies as teams work to innovate products and customer experiences. Meanwhile, globally distributed virtual teams have also grown more common, but collaborating across time zones presents a new set of challenge to navigate. To address some of these challenges, many organizations are also implementing more agile information design strategies. Architecting user-friendly work environments that support collaboration for globally distributed virtual teams practicing agile methodologies is not a simple task, however. This article reports results from a workplace study of a distributed team of information experience designers at a multinational software company as the team worked through reorganization of their internal processes and workflow. The case study illustrates which environmental design features caused disruptions and contradictions for the team as they participated in project work.