• Homepage of the Institute for Computer Science III of the University of Bonn

POLITeam Project

- development of cooperation tools to support Bonn-Berlin government

- University of Bonn Research Topic: Communication and Co-operation Systems

• Overview
• Points of Emphasis
• Selected Papers
• Cooperation Partners
• University of Bonn Project Members
• Final Report

Overview

Specific goal of the POLITeam project consortia is the development of an integrative groupware-system that provides a comprehensive support for spatially distributed, asynchronous work. The following POLITeam components are of major relevance for the work of the Institute for Computer Science III:

• The workflow component supports cooperative and coordinated processes, for instance ministerial business procedures, by the means of electronic circulation folders;
• A shared desktop supports the cooperative editing of arbitrary documents, for instance enabling two construction engineers to work on a joint document;
• The notification and information service informs users individually of past and current events in their cooperative context, for instance sending a notification to a user when the document she wants to work on is available;

PoliTeam pursues a strategy of cooperative and evolutionary work in league with users. Representatives of potential end-users from public administration and industry have therefore been involved in the project from its inception. The technical basis for the system is an already-available groupware solution, "LinkWorks"(TM), which is being tested in conjunction with the pilot partners and which will, in subsequent project phases, be iteratively extended. The following figure illustrates the evolutionary aspect of POLITeam. Rather short cycles of system use and adaptation are enhanced by system redesign when necessary. Adaptation can be partly performed by the end-users who are also strongly involved in redesign issues.

It is anticipated that concrete application of the initial system in everyday work environments will lead, in conjunction with feedback from the application partners, to the determination of further requirements for coordinating support systems. These will in turn prompt new developments which will themselves be tested in the field.

Points of Emphasis

Integrated Organization and Technology Development (OTE)

We proposed the Integrated Organization and Technology Development (OTE) approach in order to combine modern methods of organizational development with participative ways of intruducing a new technology in an organization. OTE is an evolutionary process in which users supported by facilitators analyze their work and organization and cooperate with system developers to come up with a system that fits their current needs best and is flexible enough to cope with future organizational changes.

Being faced with growing complexity of environmental demands and the increasing speed of organizational change it becomes more and more important to involve users in the process of system development and system adaptation. This is particularly true for a groupware like POLITeam which is supposed to adequately support the ways of communication and cooperation between the users. Several approaches of user participation (e.g. the union-driven Scandinavian approach) are considered and evaluated for their use for the participative development of groupware.

Since the actions of one person working with a groupware system generally affect others (e.g. if they share data or have a common work space) there is a lot of potential for conflicts between users. These conflicts need to be detected and dealt with. To do this we suggest different mechanisms for conflict management which include visibility of other's actions, the chance to prevent somebody else's action, negotiations via an extra communication channel, and others. Depending on the work situation one or more of these mechanisms can be appropriate.

The Notification and Information Service designed for POLITeam is meant to support awareness as well as privacy aspects. Therefore, the generation of events should be configurable within a field of application. On the "consumer-side" contexts of interest should be defined to avoid information overload. Here, the presentation of events by an appropriate user interface also plays an important role.

Access control is an important part of any information sharing system. Supporting cooperative work requires a refined concept of access rights. Every access control model has to handle the organizational requirements with different group structures and roles which can be associated to the users. So the model has to be flexible regarding the different access possibilities of different types of objects within the system. On the other hand there need to be rules, regulations, and default values so that the flexibility of access rights still can be handled. Within the POLITeam project we want to find out what degree of flexibility and regulation of access rights serves the needs of our application partners best.

Selected Papers

• Kahler, H.: From Taylorism to Tailorability, in: Anzai, Y.; Ogawa, K.; Mori, H. (eds): Symbiosis of Human and Artifact, Elsevier, Amsterdam 1995
• Pfeifer, A.: Zugriffsrechte in kooperativen Arbeitsumgebungen, in: Proceedings des Workshops "Koordinationsmethoden und Werkzeuge bei der computergestützten kooperativen Arbeit, 7.7.95 in Bamberg, pp. 112 - 124
• Pfeifer, A.; Wulf, V.: Aushandelbarkeit als Konfliktlösungsstrategie in gemeinsam genutzten Datenbanken. In: Brödner, Peter; Paul, Hansjürgen; Hamburg, Ileana (Hg.) (1996): Kooperative Konstruktion und Entwicklung - die Zukunft von CAD-Systemen. München: Rainer Hampp Verlag
• Rohde, M.; Pfeifer, A.; Wulf, V.: Konfliktmanagement bei Vorgangsbearbeitungssystemen; in: Wirtschaftsinformatik 38, (1996) S.199-209
• Wulf, V: Conflicts and Negotiations in Multi-User Applications; in: Kent, A.; Williams, J. G. (eds): Encyclopedia of Microcomputers, Dekker, New York et al., 1996 (in preparation)
• Wulf, V.: Groupware within the Process of Integrated Organization and Technology Development; in: Bulletin of ACM-SIGOIS, 4/1996, Vol 17,No 1, S24-25
• Wulf, V.: Mechanisms for Conflict Management in Groupware; in: Anzai, Y.; Ogawa, K.; Mori, H. (eds): Symbiosis of Human and Artifact, Elsevier, Amsterdam 1995, pp. 379 - 385
• Wulf, V.; Rohde, M.: Towards an Integrated Organization and Technology Development; in: Proceedings of the Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems, 23. - 25.8.1995, Ann Arbor (Michigan), ACM-Press, New York 1995, pp. 55 - 64
• Wulf, V.; Rohde, M.: Integrated Organization and Technology Development - An Approach to Manage Change; in: Brandt, D. (ed.): Proceedings of the 5th IFAC Symposium on Automated Systems based on Human Skill - Discussion Group V, Aachen 1995, pp. 135 - 140

Cooperation Partners

• the VW-GEDAS System- und Software house, Berlin (consortium leader),
• the Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT) of the GMD, providing more information about POLITeam at that site (in German).
• and the the Institute for Computer Science III (german) of the University of Bonn.

• the Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth with offices in Bonn and Berlin
• the Ministry for Justice, of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with offices in Schwerin, Bonn, Brussels, and Tallinn
• and Audi-AG, with offices in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm

Uni Bonn Project Members