ABSTRACT
Advances in computing and communications capabilities are becoming widely available to groups to help them to do their work. The development of these systems has primarily grown out of new technologies and not from an understanding of the assignments groups are asked to complete. We believe that an in-depth understanding of the complex tasks that groups are frequently assigned is necessary to realize the full capabilities of new technologies. In this chapter, we focus on groups which face the highly interactive and complex task of developing new products and present a description of the activities in which these teams engage and move from that data to suggest how information technology might better be used to support the work of those teams.
