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

Author List: Briggs, Robert O.; Kolfschoten, Gwendolyn L.; Vreede, Gert-Jan de; Lukosch, Stephan; Albrecht, Conan C.;
Journal of Management Information Systems, 2013, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 159-194.
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.
Keywords: collaboration; collaboration engineering; collaboration support system; collaboration technology; computer-assisted collaboration engineering; process support application
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#296 0.597 collaboration support collaborative facilitation gss process processes technology group organizations engineering groupware facilitators use work tool address practitioners focused develop
#287 0.113 design systems support development information proposed approach tools using engineering current described developing prototype flexible built architecture environment integrated designing
#246 0.091 strategic benefits economic benefit potential systems technology long-term applications competitive company suggest additional companies industry operating costs difficult substantial total
#250 0.086 enterprise improvement organizations process applications metaphors packaged technology organization help knows extends improved overcoming package learning better evolution build lead
#129 0.060 expert systems knowledge knowledge-based human intelligent experts paper problem acquisition base used expertise intelligence domain inductive rules machine artificial task