Collaborative method to maintain business process models updated

Business process models are often forgotten after their creation and its representation is not usually updated. This appears to be negative as processes evolve over time. This paper discusses the issue of business process models maintenance through the definition of a collaborative method that creates interaction contexts enabling business actors to discuss about business processes, sharing business knowledge. The collaboration method extends the discussion about existing process representations to all stakeholders promoting their update. This collaborative method contributes to improve business process models, allowing updates based in change proposals and discussions, using a groupware tool that was developed. Four case studies were developed in real organizational environment. We came to the conclusion that the defined method and the developed tool can help organizations to maintain a business process model updated based on the inputs and consequent discussions taken by the organizational actors who participate in the processes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

E-COLLABORATION. THE NEW ECHONOMIC WORLD

In this paper we will present what e-collaboration means and how can this concept revolutionize the XXI-th century economy. Our analysis leads to a conclusion that the future of business will be based on technological backgrounds. Breaking time and space frontiers will be the key of success in a hard competitive business environment. In our opinion this goals will be achieved by the implementation of groupware. However, our study shows that this field still needs a lot of normalization as concept of e-collaboration still has no standard approaches and many theoreticians still confuse collaboration with the classical “three c” terms.economy

Evaluating groupware support for software engineering students

Software engineering tasks, during both development and maintenance, typically involve teamwork using computers. Team members rarely work on isolated computers. An underlying assumption of our research is that software engineering teams will work more effectively if adequately supported by network-based groupware technology. Experience of working with groupware and evaluating groupware systems will also give software engineering students a direct appreciation of the requirements of engineering such systems. This research is investigating the provision of such network-based support for software engineering students and the impact these tools have on their groupwork. We will first describe our experiences gained through the introduction of an asynchronous virtual environment ­ SEGWorld to support groupwork during the Software Engineering Group (SEG) project undertaken by all second year undergraduates within the Department of Computer Science. Secondly we will describe our Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) module which has been introduced into the students' final year of study as a direct result of our experience with SEG, and in particular its role within Software Engineering. Within this CSCW module the students have had the opportunity to evaluate various groupware tools. This has enabled them to take a retrospective view of their experience of SEGWorld and its underlying system, BSCW, one year on. We report our findings for SEG in the form of a discussion of the hypotheses we formulated on how the SEGs would use SEGWorld, and present an initial qualitative assessment of student feedback from the CSCW module

Towards a generic platform for developing CSCL applications using Grid infrastructure

The goal of this paper is to explore the possibility of using CSCL component-based software under a Grid infrastructure. The merge of these technologies represents an attractive, but probably quite laborious enterprise if we consider not only the benefits but also the barriers that we have to overcome. This work presents an attempt toward this direction by developing a generic platform of CSCL components and discussing the advantages that we could obtain if we adapted it to the Grid. We then propose a means that could make this adjustment possible due to the high degree of genericity that our library component is endowed with by being based on the generic programming paradigm. Finally, an application of our library is proposed both for validating the adequacy of the platform which it is based on and for indicating the possibilities gained by using it under the Grid.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Proceedings of the ECSCW'95 Workshop on the Role of Version Control in CSCW Applications

The workshop entitled "The Role of Version Control in Computer Supported Cooperative Work Applications" was held on September 10, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with the ECSCW'95 conference. Version control, the ability to manage relationships between successive instances of artifacts, organize those instances into meaningful structures, and support navigation and other operations on those structures, is an important problem in CSCW applications. It has long been recognized as a critical issue for inherently cooperative tasks such as software engineering, technical documentation, and authoring. The primary challenge for versioning in these areas is to support opportunistic, open-ended design processes requiring the preservation of historical perspectives in the design process, the reuse of previous designs, and the exploitation of alternative designs. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse group of individuals interested in examining the role of versioning in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Participation was encouraged from members of the research community currently investigating the versioning process in CSCW as well as application designers and developers who are familiar with the real-world requirements for versioning in CSCW. Both groups were represented at the workshop resulting in an exchange of ideas and information that helped to familiarize developers with the most recent research results in the area, and to provide researchers with an updated view of the needs and challenges faced by application developers. In preparing for this workshop, the organizers were able to build upon the results of their previous one entitled "The Workshop on Versioning in Hypertext" held in conjunction with the ECHT'94 conference. The following section of this report contains a summary in which the workshop organizers report the major results of the workshop. The summary is followed by a section that contains the position papers that were accepted to the workshop. The position papers provide more detailed information describing recent research efforts of the workshop participants as well as current challenges that are being encountered in the development of CSCW applications. A list of workshop participants is provided at the end of the report. The organizers would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions which were, of course, vital to the success of the workshop. We would also like to thank the ECSCW'95 conference organizers for providing a forum in which this workshop was possible

Using Shared Workspaces in Higher Education

We evaluate the use of BSCW shared workspaces in higher education by means of a comparison of seven courses in which this environment was used. We identify a number of different functions for which the BSCW environment has been used and discuss the relative success of these functions across the cases. In addition, we evaluate the cases with the 4E model of Collis et al. (2000) which predicts the chances of acceptance of ICT in an educational setting. Effectiveness for the given task appears to be a prime success factor for using ICT. But an effective tool may fail due to other factors like ease of use and organisational, socialcultural or technological obstacles. The particular strength of a shared workspace, for which BSCW is most effective and efficient, is providing a repository for objects of collaborative work. Other types of usage showed mixed results. In the future we expect that learning takes place in an integrated, open ICT environment in which different kinds of tools are available for different purposes and users can switch between tools as appropriate. We could observe this in several of the case studies, where non-use of BSCW did not mean that a particular task was not performed, but, on the contrary, a more efficient solution for the same function was available. Shared workspaces have proven to be highly useful, but it seems advisable that their purpose be limited to what they were originally designed for

Interface and Interaction Design Patterns for Intercultural Collaboration

This paper reports about on-going research into interaction design patterns in intercultural remote collaboration. It proposes that interaction and interface design patterns help to communicate and generate new design knowledge in supporting intercultural teamwork. It describes methods used to observe and develop design patterns in collocated, remote and blended collaborative learning and design contexts, and reports preliminary findings of interface and interaction design patterns, which support intercultural remote collaboration

Infrastructuring: Toward an Integrated Perspective on the Design and Use of Information Technology

In this contribution, we investigate how results from the ongoing discussion about e-Infrastructures can be used to improve the design of IT infrastructures in organizations. We first establish a perspective on organizational IT as work infrastructure that focuses on the infrastructural nature of organizational Information Systems and describe challenges for designing within and for this type of infrastructure. Then we elaborate on possible use of concepts from the e-infrastructure discussion, in particular on the concept of infrastructuring as it was developed by Star and Ruhleder (1996) and Star and Bowker (2002). Using their “salient characteristics of infrastructure” we describe the methodological approach of Infrastructuring to develop methodological and tool support for all stakeholders’ activities that contribute to the successful establishment of an information system usage (equivalent to a work infrastructure improvement). We illustrate our ideas by drawing on a case in which new work infrastructures are introduced into an organizational context and by mapping out existing and possible tool support for infrastructuring