Who Knows What in My Team? - An Interactive Visualization-Based Instrument for Developing Transactive Memory Systems in Teams

To be successful, a team must effectively use the individual knowledge that is distributed among its members. The theory of the transactive memory system (TMS) explains how such distributed knowledge is socially organized and exploited to the benefit of the whole team. In this paper, we focus on the concept and design of a visualization-based instrument for TMS development in teams that is grounded in TMS theory. More specifically, we develop a theoretical framework and concept for computer-supported TMS development on the basis of visualization and present a web-based interactive TMS visualization system and instrument for developing TMSs in small teams. The instrument consists of a step-by-step diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation of a TMS and helps teams to strengthen their TMS structure (i.e., knowing who knows what) and TMS processes (i.e., communication to update, encode, and retrieve knowledge). We explain how practitioners can use the here presented instrument for the assessment and development of TMSs and make suggestions for future research.