Discovering Emergent Virtual Work Processes in Collaborative Systems

The design of virtual workplaces that can support virtual work processes has traditionally been either ad-hoc, or has been influenced by the top-down approaches, such as ‘virtual architecture’ and requirements identification and analysis. There are several problems with the top-down approaches. We still lack knowledge about how people collaborate in distributed computer-mediated information environments, hence, the requirements in the top-down approach are usually derived from the expectation of how the business process will run in a face-to-face environment. Another problem with existing groupware support for such environments is the difficulty in obtaining, and subsequently retaining and reusing, ready-made configurations of collaborative work processes. Such configurations naturally occur during the actual use of collaborative system when conducting projects. These configurations reflect the actual dynamics of the process, adapting the environment to support emerging work proce...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: COOPIS
• Authors: Simeon J. Simoff, Robert P. Biuk-Aghai
• Keywords: Collaborative, COOPIS 2002, Information System, Top-down Approaches, Work Processes