Towards a Shared Platform for Virtual Collaboration Analysis

Prior applications of a system to monitor ITmediated communication activities of engineering teams provided new insights into the collaboration behavior during the early phases of engineering projects. Building on those findings, we now present an architecture for a platform that aims to establish ‘out-of-the-box’ monitoring capabilities for virtual team environments and to facilitate the sharing and evaluation of recorded activities within a larger research community. To demonstrate the applicability of our instrument, we present the intended usage workflow and provide an outline of current applications in the domains of software engineering and engineering design. Our vision is a common service for capturing and analyzing virtual collaboration activities that promotes comparative research and team diagnostics across engineering disciplines.