Team coordination over long time scales has been analyzed through two dominant
perspectives: the contingency approach and the discursive approach. While they produced
extensive theoretical contributions, these two perspectives are not well-suited to
understand team coordination in changing and uncertain situations such as innovation
projects. In this paper, we propose a design approach to coordination, which we define as
the joint inquiry and construction by teams of their common ground. We instantiated our
conceptual model into a tool called the Team Alignment Map, which allows team members
to design their interdependencies. We evaluated the effectiveness of the tool within 22
innovation projects in two different settings. Our findings suggest that the tool facilitated
the creation of shared understanding between team members, and allowed them to
coordinate flexibly and welcome the shifting requirements of their projects. These findings
suggest that conceptualizing coordination as a design process is well-suited to innovation
projects.