Design guidelines and research directions for team analytics

PurposeThe purpose of this work is to illustrate the processes involved in managing teams in order to assist designers and developers to build software that support teamwork. A deeper investigation into the role of team analytics is discussed in this article.Design/methodology/approachMany researchers over the past several decades studied the success factors of a team. Despite many efforts, there is still no consensus on how a team should ideally be formed. Consequently, how one decides to form teams in a class depends on the domain, classroom context and pedagogical objectives. Therefore, software used to support an instructor in forming teams must be flexible enough to accommodate a variety of use cases and support the users throughout the lifecycle of teamwork. In this work, the author proposes a framework for designing general-purpose team management software. The author reviews existing team formation software and focuses specifically on opportunities for advancing research in team analytics.FindingsIn this context, the author identifies four areas of research opportunities for team analytics.Originality/valueLastly, the author proposes a series of research questions (RQs) and discusses the pedagogical, design, technical and social challenges involved.