TeamBuilder: Assembling Ad Hoc Virtual Teams to Respond to Emergent Demands

The environment in which the US military must operate has grown increasingly complex. Successful command hinges on the ability to quickly assemble and assign capable teams to cope with emergent demands, often across barriers of time and space. Thus it is imperative that a commander be able to quickly identify personnel that have the required capabilities and expertise to carry out the necessary tasks in both a face-to-face and a virtual team environment. Locating and accessing critically needed knowledge and expertise is often a significant challenge for military commanders. We propose to develop the TeamBuilder software package to enable military commanders to rapidly identify and assemble ad hoc teams, whose members have the expertise to execute specified types of missions, and are likely to work together well as a team. The commander will specify what needs to be done, when and where, and TeamBuilder will recommend who should be assigned to the mission and summarize why they are qualified for the job. The Aptima team will apply its knowledge of teamwork theory, experience making meaning of data through languages, skill integrating disparate data including communications data, and know-how on processing data to optimize teams using both optimization and social networks.