These documents are work in progress and are therefore not available directly. Much of the work has been adapted for inclusion in the deliverables. Requests for copies of any of these papers should be directed to Jacqui Forsyth in the first instance.
Carstensen, P.
RISØ-3-26
In complex work settings the effort required to coordinate the distributed activities conducted by mutually interdependent actors is burdensome. Thus, it becomes relevant to address the possibility for designing computer-based mechanisms supporting the coordination activities. This paper discusses what a conceptual framework must provide to analysts and designers in order to support them in analyzing the coordination aspects of a work setting. The discussion is based on experiences from analyzing the coordination aspects of a large software design and test project by means of conceptual framework.
Carstensen, P., C. Sørensen, et al.
RISØ-3-25
In organizations designing and manufacturing complex products, a multitude of actors representing different areas of competence cooperate. Because of the complexity of the work due to, for example, the nature of the product and the large number of interdependent participants, part of their work concerns articulation, e.g., coordination, management, allocation, negotiation. This paper is based on a field study at Foss Electric, a Danish manufacturing company. The field study surveyed a large-scale project involving mechanical, electronic, software, and chemical design of a complex instrument for testing the quality of raw milk. We argue that in this particular project a matrix organization, scheduled project meetings, informal meetings, and paper-based mechanisms are the primary means of managing the complexity of articulation work. The aim of this paper is to investigate the origination and use of mechanisms (paper-based artifacts and concomitant procedures and conventions) supporting the articulation of the work. Such mechanisms stipulating and mediating articulation work in the project are presented and discussed from the perspective of Mechanisms of Interaction [Schmidt & Simone, 1995] . The analysis supports the hypothesis that when confronted with an abundance of detailed decisions and activities that need to be articulated, organizations invent and adopt mechanisms that support the articulation by stipulating and mediating the articulation work in order to reduce the complexity of this work.This short paper presents and discusses a new definition of `mechanisms of interaction' that solves the problems encountered in applying the initial definition in field studies of the use of symbolic artifacts for coordination purposes.
Navarro, L.
UPC-3-5
The Shared Object Services and the Shared Interface Services (SOS/SIS: S*S) is an architecture to computer support the complex interactions of multiple actors working in a complex work arrangement. The S*S has grown as a result of the work in the COMIC Strand4 Sharing Objects group (C4SO) from a set of prototype systems to be an architectural model of the components, primitives, dependencies, flows of information among the components of such large scale computer system. In other words, it provides a notation(s) at the semantic level of cooperative work to design and incorporate different mechanisms of interaction built on a common set of primitives, a common notation in order to avoid artificial boundaries and support articulation work [Milano-3-3].
An overview of the architecture with a focus on the Resource Manager, a component that provides primitives to manipulate the objects of articulation work and reduce the complexity of articulation work by providing orderly access to resources in their organisational context.
The Aleph prototype system and the Aleph-Tcl are a prototype system and notation with the required malleability and linkability to specify mechanisms of interaction based on the C4SO architecture. It provides a possible platform where to implement the concepts developed in COMIC strand3.
Navarro, L.
UPC-3-7
I*EARN is a non-profit organisation that supports world-wide educational projects. Given the scale of that organisation, this kind of work is only possible with the use of computer networks and applications such as electronic mail, computer conferencing, world-wide Web documents and videoconference.
We examine the structure and mechanisms used by I*EARN to work in large scale projects in the light of the computational notation defined in this strand.
Navarro, L.
UPC-3-8
The SOS is an architecture developed in the COMIC project to provide a rich computational environment for large and complex CSCW applications. This chapter describes how that architecture relates to the C-MOI notation. One realisation of that architecture is Aleph. The most important features of Aleph are the Resource Manager, the Aleph-Tcl notation and the mechanisms for linking environments (contexts and federation managers). Aleph-Tcl is a notation, an interpreted language to manipulate, configure, adapt and write new and existing Aleph components. It is compared with the C-MOI notation.
Navarro, L. and G. Rodriguez
UPC-3-6
The Aleph-Tcl is a prototype notation with support for malleability and linkability to specify mechanisms of interaction based on the C4SO architecture. Aleph can be adapted and incrementally built by means of the Aleph-Tcl notation and the use of a X-Windows Control Interface.
The Aleph-Tcl language is now oriented to be a Tcl interface for the Resource management and Trading functions. There are four kind of objects resources, roles, agents and contexts. Therefore Aleph commands are structured in four groups depending on the class of objects.
The provision of federation mechanisms extends that cooperation to the large scale.
This working paper builds on the ideas from UPC-3-5 and Deliverable 3.3.
Schmidt, K. and C. Simone
RISØ-24
The paper outlines a new approach to CSCW systems design based on the concept of `mechanisms of interaction.'. The concept of mechanisms of interaction has been developed as a generalization of phenomena described in empirical investigations of the use of artifactually embodied protocols for the articulation of cooperative activities in different work domains. Based on the evidence of the corpus of these empirical studies, the paper identifies a set of general requirements for computational mechanisms of interaction.
The paper argues that a common computational notation for constructing different types of computational mechanisms of interaction is feasible and outlines a three level architecture by means of which the notation in principle makes it possible to construct malleable and interoperable computational mechanisms of interaction.
Schmidt, K. and C. Simone
RISØ-3-29
The paper outlines an approach to CSCW systems design based on the concept of `coordination mechanisms.' The concept of coordination mechanisms has been developed as a generalization of phenomena described in empirical investigations of the use of artifactually imprinted protocols for the articulation of cooperative activities in different work domains. Based on the evidence of this corpus of empirical studies, the paper identifies a set of general requirements for computational coordination mechanisms and sketches the architecture of Ariadne, a CSCW environment for constructing such malleable and linkable computational coordination mechanisms.
Schmidt, K., C. Simone, et al.
RISØ-3-30
Evidence from field studies shows that CSCW facilities should be conceived of as specialized devices that must be able to interact with other CSCW facilities in a wider organizational field. Accordingly, it is crucial for a CSCW environment to provide means to ensure that coordination facilities incorporated in different applications can interact. As a solution, a strategy based on a general notation for constructing coordination mechanisms and a multi-agent approach is proposed.
Environments for Cooperative Systems Development
Sommerville, I. and T. Rodden
LANCS-3-2
Software engineering projects are dependant on the cooperation of many people to ensure their success. However, environments designed to support software engineering have historically provide little support for cooperative working. This papers examines the nature of these environment and the ways in which they both support and inhibit cooperation in the software development process. The authors argue for the need to reconsider the nature of support environments and the particular features which a cooperative software development environment should exhibit. The paper concludes by presenting an architecture for a cooperative software development environment and an initial environment which realises this architecture.
Sørensen, C.
RISØ-3-28
This paper considers the nature of CASE tools and their relation to the software process. A particular focus for this paper is the extent to which CASE tools recognise and support coordination as part of the general software development process.
Sørensen, C., P. Carstensen, et al.
RISØ-3-27
When organizations embark on manufacturing complex products, a multitude of actors representing different areas of competence cooperate. Because of the complexity of the work due to, for example, the nature of the product and the large number of interdependent participants, part of their work concerns articulation, e.g., coordination, management, allocation, negotiation. This paper is based on a field study at Foss Electric, a Danish manufacturing company. The field study surveyed a large-scale project involving mechanical, electronic, software, and chemical design of a complex instrument for testing the quality of raw milk. We argue that in this particular project a matrix organization, scheduled project meetings, informal meetings, and paper-based artifacts are the primary means of managing the complexity of articulation work. The aim of this paper is to investigate the origination and use of artifacts supporting cooperation between the participants in manufacturing work. The analysis supports the hypothesis that when confronted with an abundance of detailed decisions that need to be articulated, organizations invent and adopt artifacts which can be interpreted as stipulating and mediating articulation work in order to reduce the need for project meetings and informal meetings.
Tuikka, T.
OULU-3-3
During spring and summer 1994 a HyperCard based prototype software application was developed at University of Oulu for creating demonstrations of cooperative systems. This MOI-tool enables users to link user interface objects like fields, buttons, cards etc. between many workstations by slightly extending HyperCards facilities and its graphical user interface (GUI).
The objective of the MOI-tool was to support demonstrating cooperative systems in a participatory design situation and the requirements to build it were derived from a small setting of case examples, whereas the ideas for implementation are principally loyal to user interface solutions of Hypercard.
This paper discusses of experimentally demonstrating a cooperative system: a bug handling mechanism, in order to discover differences between the MOI-tool design and the requirements of a possible cooperative system. The experiment results in one exemplary demonstration of a cooperative system with an explanation of breakdowns during this demonstration. These problems illustrate apparently the shortcomings of using user interface objects as a basis for the MOI-tool design for demonstrating cooperative systems. The paper ends up in a consideration of a possible future approach which could mean a change in concepts of tool design to another level of abstraction, in the level where we are discussing of roles, and actors, the objects of articulation work.