Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2. Requirements for a CACE tool
Support for the sharing of design patterns; to support the community
in sharing their thinkLets and experiences with them.
Share thinkLets, including relevant information for both the collabora-
tion engineer and the practitioner.
Add new thinkLets and to add variations to thinkLets.
Enable a community of collaboration engineers, facilitators, and
practitioners to discuss thinkLets.
Support the key steps of the design approach; to share best practices,
tools and methods to improve the quality of the thinkLet based
designs.
Support the analysis of the collaborative task to be supported.
Support the decomposition of the collaboration process.
Support the selection and combination of thinkLets.
Support the specification of thinkLets.
Support the visualization of the collaboration process flow.
Support the validation of the collaboration process design.
Support the deployment of the work practice; the transfer of the col-
laboration process design to practitioners in the organization, and
to support their adoption and ownership of the project around the
collaborative work practice.
Support the creation of different types of output documents such as
an agenda, a process manual, cue cards, and collaboration technology
configuration settings, based on the thinkLets used in the collabora-
tion process design.
Support for project management.
Support for practitioners to share experiences
other thinkLets must be updated, as (potential)
combinations with the new thinkLet must be
evaluated. If the person who added the thinkLet
does not know how it will combine with other
thinkLets, experts in collaboration process de-
sign should be asked to contribute these aspects.
For this purpose it would be useful to include a
wizard that supports the user though the process
of sharing a new thinkLet.
It would also be useful to store the thinkLet
library in multiple languages. If the system offers
multiple languages than language selection should
be one of the first steps in the design process, to
make each specification fit the selected language.
For the community using the CACE tool it would
be best if the comments on thinkLets and the thin-
kLet names are in one language so that a shared
meaning of thinkLet labels remains.
Collaboration engineers and facilitators that
use the pattern language and the CACE tool
should be able to comment on attributes of the
thinkLet and to offer suggestions for alternations
of standard attributes of the thinkLets. They can
customize the thinkLets in their design, but should
not be allowed to alter the structure of the master
thinkLet. Besides discussing thinkLets, the system
should also enable storage of complete process
designs, which can be shared with other design-
ers/facilitators and with practitioners. These users
should be able to comment both on the entire
process design and on the individual thinkLets
within the design. The users maintaining the master
thinkLets should regularly check these comments
and when necessary alter the master thinkLet. In
this way the community of collaboration process
designers can share and maintain an intergraded
library of design patterns.
5.2 tools to support the
design Approach
Analysis Support
The support for analysis should consist of a
checklist that helps the Collaboration Engineer
to gather all information required to design the
collaboration process. However, with many users
and stakeholders in the process, it is useful to first
Search WWH ::
Custom Search