Journal Article

Facilitator-in-a-Box: Process Support Applications to Help Practitioners Realize the Potential of Collaboration Technology

Lukosch, Stephan, Albrecht, Conan C., de Vreede, Gert-Jan, Briggs, Robert O., Kolfschoten, Gwendolyn L.

2013

Overview

The potential benefits of collaboration technologies are typically realized only in groups led by collaboration experts. This raises the facilitator-in-the-box challenge: Can collaboration expertise be packaged with collaboration technology in a form that nonexperts can reuse with no training on either tools or techniques? We address that challenge with process support applications (PSAs). We describe a collaboration support system (CSS) that combines a computer-assisted collaboration engineering platform for creating PSAs with a process support system runtime platform for executing PSAs. We show that the CSS meets its design goals: (1) to reduce development cycles for collaboration systems, (2) to allow nonprogrammers to design and develop PSAs, and (3) to package enough expertise in the tools that nonexperts could execute a well-designed collaborative work process without training.

• Publisher: Routledge,M. E. Sharpe,Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subject: Collaboration / collaboration engineering / collaboration support system / collaboration technology / computer-assisted collaboration engineering / Design engineering / Engineering / Experts / Information systems / Information technology / Management information systems / process support application / Reuse / Software engineering / Studies / Support networks / Technological change / Technology / Training