Team Analytics: Understanding Teams in the Global Workplace

Summary:
The paper describes a web based software called Team Analytics.  The purpose of this software is to allow global corporate teams to better interact with one another.  In todays corporate world many teams are rushed together and assembled ad-hoc with no face to face interaction between team members.  This forces team members to communicate via email, phone, or instant message and removes much of the personal connection from the team.

Team Analytics attempts to ease the team environment by providing information about the team as a whole instead of in a one by one fashion.  The application features a bio about the team members with a picture, time zone aware meeting scheduling, team statistics and more.  With Team Analytics, team members can feel more integrated into the team and organizing the team is made a great deal easier.

Discussion:
Team Analytics really seemed like a great piece of software.  Technology has been very slow in keeping up meaningful personal connections.  Team Analytics, with something as simple as a picture of the team members, allows the team to feel better connected.  Its approach of looking at the team as a whole allows team members to quickly jump in and makes scheduling much easier.  I have worked on a couple teams were I never met the other people in the team and it was very frustrating.  Team Analytics seems like it would have been a dream come true.

By in large the software seemed very good as is.  The meeting pain feature seemed like a good idea on paper but in practice I didn't feel that it was implemented the right way.  It seemed complicated to understand and user comments replayed my sentiments.  I would suggest to the team that they quickly fix that aspect of the software and continue to push it.  I see a great need for something like Team Analytics.