Graph-based collaboration analysis of an agile medical engineering project with structural metrics

Agile development approaches are gaining popularity in hardware product development and medical engineering. Consequently, techniques of structural complexity management can be applied on agile projects. This paper analyses the collaboration data of a twelve-month project to design a 3D-printed microtiter plate. Exchanged e-mails, created artifacts, and conducted tasks were analyzed to identify typical barriers of inter-disciplinary collaboration. Appropriate improvement measures to overcome these barriers were suggested and evaluated in a four-hour workshop with members of the core team of the project. As a result, out of the collaboration network with 851 nodes and 9001 edges, six main barriers were identified. The most hindering barriers according to the experts' opinion were matched with appropriate improvement measures. After an assessment of the cost/benefit ratio, two measures were chosen for implementation