Team coordination in decision support projects

Abstract

Coordination is one of the key design components for group decision support systems. Coordination strategies refer to the meta-level knowledge for enticing decision-making units to work effectively with each other. The actual problems of coordination in projects that make use of decision support tools (e.g. shared databases, mathematical, model bases, reporting tools, etc.) refer to information sharing concerning various types of information (e.g. the input and output data), coordination between group members in the use of mathematical models, and to the standardisation of the work process in the form of rigid procedures. The present paper analyses the coordination issues that arise in decision-support groupwork and introduces the job concept as a medium for modelling multi-user processes in decision-support projects. The paper discusses the conceptual design, empirical development and actual use of a system that supports model-based reasoning and aids the coordination of multi-user work-flow processes.