Abstract
Though the concept of shared spaces had been known in Groupware and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) for quite a while, it did not become popular until the arrival of the Internet and social software. Implicitly, the concept of shared spaces has penetrated many IT-areas, including the area of Business Process Management. Though shared spaces are used in many systems and tools, like Google Drive and Projectplace, there is a lack of research investigating this usage in a generic way. The article aims to fill this gap by introducing a generic model of a Business Process Support (BPS) system based on shared space that supports the comparison, analysis and design of BPS systems. In addition, the article goes in more details on one design issue – the structuring of shared spaces. This is done by analyzing and comparing two different BPS systems that exploit the concept of shared spaces, though implicitly. These systems use different approaches to shared space structuring. The first one organizes the information by grouping similar types of items without regard to the flow of activities in a business process, while the other organizes the information around groups of activities that are usually completed as a block. Which model to choose in a particular situation depends on the characteristics of the business process and its participants. In order to facilitate this choice, the article offers a number of guidelines derived from the experience of using the two BPS systems in practice. The article also discusses in what circumstances BPS systems with shared spaces are preferable to traditional workflow BPS systems.
Highlights
The concept of shared spaces has been developed in the area of Groupware and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) quite a long time ago, see for instance [1]
The workflow view cannot offer a proper basis for other types of Business Process Support (BPS) systems, for instance, case-handling systems [7], and especially those belonging to the new paradigm of Adaptive Case Management [8]
BPS systems based on structure shared spaces, like Projectplace [2], do exist and are used in practice
Summary
The concept of shared spaces has been developed in the area of Groupware and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) quite a long time ago, see for instance [1]. Perjons, “Structured Shared Spaces as a Basis for Building Business Process Support Systems: A Generic Model and Analysis of Examples,” Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly, CSIMQ, no. The most common view on business processes is the workflow view, where a process is considered as a partially ordered sequence of operations/activities aimed at reaching some goal This view serves as a basis for workflow-based BPS systems [6]. Basic concepts of business processes and BPS systems used in the rest of the article are introduced. These concepts are generic, meaning that they are compatible with different types of BPS systems
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