Seminar by David Mendonça

Big Data Meets Team Performance in Dynamic Task Environments

David Mendonça

Associate Professor

Industrial and Systems Engineering Department

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

This talk takes a task-centric, data-intensive perspective on the question of whether changes in team composition may help or hinder team performance. Data are taken from two very different, highly dynamic task environments: debris removal following large-scale wind events, and force-on-force combat in the online game League of Legends. In both environments, task performance depends on teamwork, the data are copious, and there are strong incentives for teams to perform effectively. There are also differences, particularly regarding the structure and control of the work being formed. The talk demonstrates how naturally occurring data--combined with explicit modeling of the task domain--may be used to resolve some prior, equivocal findings in the literature concerning the relationship between team composition and team performance. It also addresses challenges associated with taking a "big (secondary) data" perspective on teamwork, together with implications for future research.

David Mendonça is an Associate Professor in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Until recently, he directed the National Science Foundation’s program in Humans, Disasters and the Built Environment, also participating in the creation and/or administration of a number of others. His research focuses on the development and application of systems engineering methods in the domain of disaster response.