Context and Collaborative Work: A Context-Sensitive Intervention Approach for Collaboration in Dynamic Environment

• Published in: Context in Computing pp. 327 - 341
• Main Authors: Knoll, Stefan Werner, Lukosch, Stephan G.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Springer New York 2014
• Subjects: Collaboration Process; Individual Group Member; Semantic Model; Shared Rule; Virtual Team
• ISBN: 9781493918867; 1493918869
• DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-1887-4_21

The context of complex design and engineering processes is characterized by dynamic requirements, like changing process goals or group constellations. To deal with these dynamics in a virtual environment, a context-sensitive collaboration support system needs to consider a changing context and provide virtual teams with the support they need. Such elastic collaboration support can range from a fixed process and tool configuration to an open collaboration environment that enables groups to interact in a self-organized way. In this chapter, research about a context-sensitive intervention approach is described that intends to support elastic collaboration in dynamic environments. Based on a review of existing theories on collaboration performance, the use of contextual process information to monitor group performance during collaboration is discussed. Thereby, a rule concept is introduced to derive interventions for elastic collaboration processes compared to existing approaches for context modeling in collaboration.