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

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 eit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of management information systems 2013-04, Vol.29 (4), p.159-194
Main Authors: Briggs, Robert O., Kolfschoten, Gwendolyn L., de Vreede, Gert-Jan, Lukosch, Stephan, Albrecht, Conan C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collaboration
collaboration engineering
collaboration support system
collaboration technology
computer-assisted collaboration engineering
Design engineering
Engineering
Experts
Information systems
Information technology
Management information systems
process support application
Software engineering
Studies
Technological change
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0742-1222
1557-928X
DOI:10.2753/MIS0742-1222290406