Improving continuous improvement with CATeam: lessons from a longitudinal case study

Continuous improvement is a well known method for improving an organization step by step. This paper shows that with computer support even an improvement process can be improved. It presents a long-term study of GSS use in the Hohenheim Computer Aided Team (CATeam) room. Over two years the authors observed a natural group performing a continuous improvement process to improve their own work. The paper discusses four improvement meetings by combining case descriptions with analysis of the observed meetings. Chapters of this paper deal with anonymity, voting, managerial issues, organizational change and effects of the overall process on the group itself. Finally the authors conclude with some lessons on how to perform improvement meetings with computer support and give some basic success factors