Collaborative Information Behavior and Human-AI Context in Group Work

New Product Development (NPD) environments are information-intensive, often leading to information gaps that can adversely affect development goals. This study examines the triggers of collaborative information behavior (CIB) among agile teams, their information-related challenges, and how human-AI collaboration could play a role. Data was collected through interviews with 18 agile practitioners in the US and Canada and guided by Dervin's sense-making theory for thematic analysis. The findings show that most agile teams work in hybrid/remote settings and CIB manifests during agile events, collaboration on unclear requirements, dependency management, and others. Agile teams utilize traditional and emerging tools to support collaborative tasks. Human-AI collaboration could enhance productivity through task automation, predictive analytics, customer-centric value delivery, and others. The study highlighted the tasks and activities for designers to consider when building AI-enabled tools and recommended increased AI awareness and further exploration of human-AI contexts in CIB research.