Understanding the Data Needs for Developing a Computational Model of Team Dynamics

Understanding team effectiveness is crucial to improving performance in many workplace and educational contexts. Many theories have postulated a variety of factors that influence team success. However, they are limited to a descriptive framework or involve small empirical studies. In contexts involving many teams, we would ideally like to monitor ongoing team behaviors to alert problematic behaviors and reward positive actions. To accomplish this goal, we propose to develop a computational model of team concepts to facilitate the detection, prediction, and proper management of team behaviors. In this work, we synthesize the literature on team models and present six overarching team concepts. We select two specific concepts and model them as a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN). We demonstrate the utility of the DBN models in simulation and discuss the gap between the behaviors prescribed by team theories and the data needs in computational models. Lastly, we discuss possible data sources that serve as starting points for developing empirically accurate models.