Collaborative decision-making in software research projects: The innovation challenge

Abstract

Innovation has the potential to propel organizations to unprecedented levels of performance and to strengthen their competitive advantage. Collaboration plays a significant role in boosting the innovation capabilities and reaching performance goals. Improving collaboration brings substantial overall benefits ranging from faster internal decision making, reduced costs through shared resources, and the development of more innovative products. The COViD-10 outbreak has radically altered traditional collaboration and teamwork patterns, requiring new approaches that would nurture creativity, engagement, and motivation at team level, and that would also streamline decision-making processes. This paper investigates the use of a collaborative platform that can enhance teamwork achievements and decision-making capabilities and presents an analysis of experiments carried out within software research projects. The approach considers key challenges in today's global and fast-changing research and business environments that demand improvements in collaboration among functions ranging from R&D to distribution. The authors explore techniques for improving the effectiveness of teams, capitalizing on the promises of cutting-edge software and the applicability of the Design Thinking methodology and its potential to boost collaboration. This research probes the capacity of technology to support team performance and better decision-making processes. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.