COO-flow: a process model to support cooperative processes

Abstract

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In this paper we present a process management technology for the coordination of creative and large scale distributed processes. Our approach is the fruit of usage analysis in domains like Software Development, Architecture/Engineering/Construction, and e-Learning processes. The basic conclusions of these experiments are the following: 1) cooperative processes are described in the same way than production processes are, but descriptions are interpreted in a different way depending on the nature of process, 2) the variation of this interpretation depends mainly on the requested flexibility of control flow and of data flow, and on the relationship between them, 3) the management of intermediate results is a central feature for supporting the cooperation inherent to these processes; in addition, the management of intermediate results provides an active support for the coordination of a team distributed on a large scale network, typically Internet. COO-flow is a process technology that results from these studies. It is based on two complementing contributions: anticipation that allows succeeding activities to cooperate, and COO-transactions that allows parallel activities to cooperate. This paper introduces COO-flow characteristics, gives a (partial) formalization and quickly discusses its Web implementation.