A Hybrid Model of Multiple Team Membership and Its Impacts on System Design

Within an organization, Multiple Team Membership (MTM) occurs when employees are working in multiple teams simultaneously. Approximately 65% of all knowledge workers are working
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n an MTM environment; however, research into MTM has only begun to emerge over the last decade, with no application of simulation to date. The extant research studies, using human subject studies, have focused on the impact of utilizing MTM on productivity and effectiveness of individuals or teams, effectively looking at micro-level phenomena. This paper outlines the first attempt to understand the macro-level phenomena of MTM using quantitative means. The scenario under consideration is a large system design project that requires multiple interdependent teams of engineering designers. An agent-based simulation of this scenario was created. The results from a simulation experiment indicate that using MTM helps in more complex design projects, i.e., it increases the performance of finding a feasible design solution when coupling is introduced.