Designing Tools for Collectively Solving Ill-Structured Problems

Abstract

Ill-structured management problems are of paramount importance for organizations today. As they are complex to solve, they are undertaken by teams of diverse individuals who make use of tools to help them in solving such problems. Most tools either focus on supporting collaborative practices or are dedicated to solving specific ill-structured problems. In this paper, we bridge these two perspectives and provide design principles for tools that both support collaboration and are tailored for specific ill-structured problems. We derived these design principles from our participant observation of two critical cases of such collaborative tools: the Business Model Canvas and the Team Alignment Map. We lay the theoretical and design foundations for future developments of similar collaborative tools. Our paper illustrates the value that the IS discipline can bring to the increasing call for a design approach to management by rigorously developing tools for co-design.