Intervention studies using the virtual design team

We built and analyzed a model of the organization of an engineering development project. The objective of the analysis was to enable a manager to identify risks that might adversely affect project performance and to identify feasible and useful interventions to mitigate risks. Implemented in a computer simulation the Virtual Design Team (VDT) model measures and predicts useful and measurable aspects of organization performance and quality. We applied the simulation model early in the design of an industrial test case and made recommendations based on our analysis. Considering our recommendations, the cooperating manager intervened in the engineering process to reduce some of the organizational risks that we predicted might adversely impact project performance. In our subsequent observations of the project, the potential risks did not appear. This work contributes to computational organizational modeling, TQM and organizational modeling methodology and testing methods