Design of Software Assisted Transactive Memory

This book is a thesis completed as a partial requirement for a Master's of Science in Software Engineering. The manuscript has not been altered to a popular format--if you have academic resource access you can save money and review the material online for free. The material on transactive memory and DSR is ground breaking-a culmination of several suggestions by other researchers in a design to move memory, specifically transactive memory, from shared 'human' storage to electronic database storage. Design Science Research, along with other 'real world' research methods, has something of a bad name due to its abuse (misappropriate and misunderstanding) by less talented researchers. It is my firm belief that DSR and action research can be powerful tools if RIGOR is applied. Unfortunately, TAPS is playing for our friend Rigor in American academics...if not Taps then the patient is terminal with dark circles under his/her eyes, the outcome seems grim. Grade inflation and pressure to pass students, especially paying students (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) is a cancer eating its way through our universities and colleges. In response you see before you this master's thesis-no corners were cut-except perhaps in editing, as there was no professional editor employed to review this manuscript-my apologies; however, the method is sound, the findings are supported, and the work is solid. This work (along with the many mentioned in the acknowledgements) is dedicated to those who think that the pursuit of knowledge is more important that increased graduation rates, 'good' grades, awards, honors, or any of the garnishes served as the main courses in our universities now. Abstract: Virtual teams' asynchronous nature, lag time between communications, fragmentedcommunication sources and knowledge bases delays the development of transactive memorybetween team members. Communication challenges coupled with the tendency to stereotypewithin heterogeneous groups creates serious obstacles to on-time task completion andproductivity for these teams. In addition, surface-level diversity can negatively impact teamcohesiveness and communication which increases challenges for project managers and candegrade team performance with reference to task completion. This research proposes a softwaredesign to assist virtual teams in developing and maintaining transactive memory through the useof the Galileo Method, maintenance of TMS team state within a database, and reduction ofsurface-level diversity characteristics. The general suggested design is instantiated in aprototype and evaluated against a theoretical isolated virtual team. The evaluation of theprototype indicates that the prototype is largely successful in maintaining team transactivememory within a database which team members access as an external memory source.