aTouch won funding for research project Agile Collaboration wall

The project management tool market is valued at $ 2.5 billion. Until 20 years ago, the so-called waterfall model was used in software development, a sequential process. With the advent of the Internet and the increasing complexity of software programs, accompanied by the pressure of shorter time-to-market, agile (iterative) software development processes have become established. However, no tool or device has prevailed worldwide and almost all teams work with “hand-knitted” methods, although enormous increases in efficiency are to be expected! Since work can now also be planned in other industries, such as in healthcare, which is becoming more and more complex, the agile methods are also used there, which further expands the market. Agile teams still work today with white boards or pin boards, where the upcoming work is managed using post-it notes, slips of paper, etc. This is confusing, error-prone and prevents the integration of geographically distributed development teams. Our product aWall (agile collaboration wall) is designed for ultra-large touch displays, which make these pin boards superfluous. The first prototypes have already been successfully developed and tested. In this project, new, complex functions are added to support distributed agile teams in their work. These functions are mainly of great interest to large corporations and the international market. The scientific challenges for the innovative tool aWall are manifold: The online synchronization of activities and changes in distributed work must be taken into account (e.g. Zurich – India), new human-computer interaction concepts for extra-large displays must be developed, new ones are needed intelligent services that support the agile way of working.