Statement

Vision

Digital technologies drive fundamental transformation processes and create new possibilities in the organization and design of work. We aim to create a future where work is not only more productive and intelligent but also aligned with human values.

Mission

We strive to:

Investigate the futures of work: Conduct research within the context of digital work, exploring digital work practices, distributed organizing, and knowledge synthesis.
Collaborate: Translate research findings into actionable insights while building partnerships with academic institutions, communities, and industry leaders.
Educate: Provide high-quality, innovative education that equips knowledge workers with the skills to navigate and shape the digital landscape responsibly.
Design: Advocate for the design of work environments that prioritize human-centric approaches and ethical considerations, ensuring that technological advancements benefit both organizations and their employees.

Values

Our core values are:

🚀 Impact in research, teaching, and practice

We challenge ourselves every day to make significant contributions to research on digital work, inspiring students in different teaching formats, and facilitating the application of our work in practice.

🛠️ Rigor, reliability, and reproducibility

We value rigorous methods that are based on evidence and yield reproducible results. To this end, we select reliable tools and standard operating principles.

♻️ Continuous improvement, openness, sustainability

We aim to make our work processes, continuous improvement efforts, and outcomes openly accessible. In particular, we prefer open-source over proprietary technology.

🙏 Participation, support, and diversity

We build a culture of support, encouraging the participation of different stakeholders, including current and former team members, students, and colleagues. We make diversity our strength.

🧑‍🎓️ Learning

We believe in continuous growth, setting aside time to learn on a regular basis, and curating helpful resources.

How we implement the values and goals

What we emphasize during onboarding
All of our teaching efforts follow the plan-do-check-adjust cycle. Our teaching evaluations and improvements are available publicly.
We choose a rigorous manuscript production system, based on Git and Markdown. This allows us to involve students and research assistants in our most important projects, giving them the opportunity to learn and contribute from day one. Without the transparent versioning, reliable control, and effective contribution mechanisms of Git, we would probably “protect the manuscript” and restrict access to our work (e.g., when working with Word).

We pursue goals in the following areas:

Annual cadence

We organize our work in a cadence of first half and second half of the year, starting with the starter and mid-year planning and review session.

---
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---
gantt
    title First half – SuSe 2026
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM-DD
    todayMarker stroke-width:5px,stroke:red,opacity:0.8
    axisFormat %b
    tickInterval 1month

    section Team
    Starter 🚀 :milestone, 2026-01-10, milestone

    section Research
    Focus           :a2, 2026-01-10, 70d

    section Teaching
    Lectures SuSe 2026            :s1, 2026-03-23, 2026-05-21

---
displayMode: compact
---
gantt
    title Second half – WiSe 2025/26
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM-DD
    todayMarker stroke-width:5px,stroke:red,opacity:0.8
    axisFormat %b
    tickInterval 1month

    section Team
    Mid-year 🎯 :milestone, 2025-06-01, milestone

    section Research
    Focus           :a2, 2025-06-01, 90d

    section Teaching
    Lectures WiSe 25/26           :w2, 2025-09-01, 2025-12-12

The agenda and meeting notes will be entered/linked here (along with links to our strategic / JF agenda)

Dates of the review and planning sessions

First half: January 10
Second half: June 01

North-star metric: Regular commits

We track our progress through incremental, high-quality contributions to our repositories.
The number of commits across our work areas serves as our north-star indicator of daily progress, learning, and improvement.

This metric reinforces how we work:

Frequent delivery → steady momentum instead of waiting for “big drops”
Transparency → visible progress enables us to offer guidance and support
Team inclusion → everyone can see changes and contribute early and often
Quality focus → commits reflect considered and valuable improvements

Deep thinking, reading, sketching, and discussion often happen away from the keyboard — on paper, whiteboards, in conversations, or during walks. We deeply value this form of intellectual work.
A commit marks the point where insights are externalized: captured in notes, papers, code, issues, or teaching materials that are recorded, versioned, and shared.
It is not a measure of effort, but a signal that thinking has been made durable and available to others — without this step, its value remains limited.

--- title: "Statement" --- ## Vision Digital technologies drive fundamental transformation processes and create new possibilities in the organization and design of work. We aim to create a future where work is not only more productive and intelligent but also aligned with human values. ## Mission We strive to: - **Investigate the futures of work**: Conduct research within the context of digital work, exploring digital work practices, distributed organizing, and knowledge synthesis. - **Collaborate**: Translate research findings into actionable insights while building partnerships with academic institutions, communities, and industry leaders. - **Educate**: Provide high-quality, innovative education that equips knowledge workers with the skills to navigate and shape the digital landscape responsibly. - **Design**: Advocate for the design of work environments that prioritize human-centric approaches and ethical considerations, ensuring that technological advancements benefit both organizations and their employees. ## Values Our core values are: ## 🚀 Impact in research, teaching, and practice We challenge ourselves every day to make significant contributions to research on digital work, inspiring students in different teaching formats, and facilitating the application of our work in practice. ## 🛠️ Rigor, reliability, and reproducibility We value rigorous methods that are based on evidence and yield reproducible results. To this end, we select reliable tools and standard operating principles. ## ♻️ Continuous improvement, openness, sustainability We aim to make our work processes, continuous improvement efforts, and outcomes openly accessible. In particular, we prefer open-source over proprietary technology.  ## 🙏 Participation, support, and diversity We build a culture of support, encouraging the participation of different stakeholders, including current and former team members, students, and colleagues. We make diversity our strength. ## 🧑‍🎓️ Learning We believe in continuous growth, setting aside time to learn on a regular basis, and curating helpful resources. <details markdown="block"> <summary>How we implement the values and goals</summary> 1. What we emphasize during [onboarding](/management/onboarding.html) 2. All of our teaching efforts follow the [*plan-do-check-adjust* cycle](/handbook/teaching/). Our [teaching evaluations](/teaching/evaluations.html) and [improvements](/teaching/improvements.html) are available publicly. 3. We choose a rigorous manuscript production system, based on Git and Markdown. This allows us to involve students and research assistants in our most important projects, giving them the opportunity to learn and contribute from day one. Without the transparent versioning, reliable control, and effective contribution mechanisms of Git, we would probably "protect the manuscript" and restrict access to our work (e.g., when working with Word). </details> We pursue goals in the following areas: - [Teaching](/teaching/statement.html) - [Research](/research/statement.html) - [Funding](/research/funding_overview.html) - [Service](/docs/50-service)  ## Annual cadence We organize our work in a cadence of **first half** and **second half** of the year, starting with the *starter* and *mid-year* [planning and review session](/management/planning_review_sessions.html). ```{mermaid} --- displayMode: compact --- gantt title First half – SuSe 2026 dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD todayMarker stroke-width:5px,stroke:red,opacity:0.8 axisFormat %b tickInterval 1month section Team Starter 🚀 :milestone, 2026-01-10, milestone section Research Focus :a2, 2026-01-10, 70d section Teaching Lectures SuSe 2026 :s1, 2026-03-23, 2026-05-21 ``` ```{mermaid} --- displayMode: compact --- gantt title Second half – WiSe 2025/26 dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD todayMarker stroke-width:5px,stroke:red,opacity:0.8 axisFormat %b tickInterval 1month section Team Mid-year 🎯 :milestone, 2025-06-01, milestone section Research Focus :a2, 2025-06-01, 90d section Teaching Lectures WiSe 25/26 :w2, 2025-09-01, 2025-12-12 ``` The agenda and meeting notes will be entered/linked here (along with links to our strategic / JF agenda) ::: {.callout-note title="Dates of the review and planning sessions"} - First half: January 10 - Second half: June 01 ::: ## North-star metric: Regular commits We track our progress through **incremental, high-quality contributions** to our repositories. The **number of commits** across our work areas serves as our **north-star indicator** of daily progress, learning, and improvement. This metric reinforces how we work: - **Frequent delivery** → steady momentum instead of waiting for “big drops” - **Transparency** → visible progress enables us to offer guidance and support - **Team inclusion** → everyone can see changes and contribute early and often - **Quality focus** → commits reflect considered and valuable improvements > Deep thinking, reading, sketching, and discussion often happen away from the keyboard — on paper, whiteboards, in conversations, or during walks. We deeply value this form of intellectual work. > A commit marks the point where insights are **externalized**: captured in notes, papers, code, issues, or teaching materials that are **recorded, versioned, and shared**. > It is not a measure of *effort*, but a signal that thinking has been **made durable and available to others** — without this step, its value remains limited.  ![Activity](../assets/reports/teaching_research_lab_handbook_commits_per_month.png)