Synchronizing juniors with senior consultants
A digital boundary object
C.S. Lochtenberg (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
F.E.H.M. Smulders – Mentor (TU Delft - DesIgning Value in Ecosystems)
G. Calabretta – Mentor (TU Delft - Responsible Marketing and Consumer Behavior)
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Abstract
The scope of this graduation project was the current organizational design (OD) approach of a service company. The initial assignment was to investigate whether there were opportunities within the current approach to make it more experience and/or user centered. The current approach is used for quite a long time and the assignment was to shine a new perspective on it by using design techniques.
Interviews with senior team members were conducted to understand the scope. Out of these interviews it became clear that there were three areas with room for improvement within the current OD approach, namely ‘knowledge management’, ‘approach standardization’ and ‘visualization’. It was decided to chose approach standardization as the focus for the rest of the project.
A second round of interviews was performed to answer why, what, and how the approach should be standardized. Out of these interviews the underlying problem came to the surface: due to experience the senior members in the team know what they are doing but they miss the simple tools/documents to bring this across to juniors or people outside the team. This problem has been used as the basis for the design statement of this project, which is: design a tool for the X team that brings overview and gives the team the completeness to express their expertise.
Based on the earlier gathered insights the OD toolbox was designed. The toolbox consists of two tools: the OD expertise map and the approach generator. The toolbox was validated with seniors and juniors of the team and seen as valuable. It turned out that the purpose of the OD toolbox is to create a shared understanding among members of the team and in this way synchronization of the different mindsets between the seniors and juniors is facilitated. The tool works as a boundary object because it is used differently by seniors and juniors. The seniors will use the tool as a quick catch up for information and juniors mostly use the tool to understand OD projects.