It is possible to design cooperative work tools based only on "common sense " and good intuitions. But the history of technology is replete with examples of good theories greatly aiding the development of useful technology. Where, then, might we look for theories to help us design computer-supported cooperative work tools? In this paper, we will describe one possible perspective-the interdisciplinary study of coordination-that focuses, in part, on how people work together now and how they might do so differently with new information technologies. In one sense, there is little that is new about the study of coordination. Many different disciplines--including computer science, sociology, political science, management science, systems theory, economics, linguistics, and psychology--have all dealt, in one way or another, with fundamental questions about coordination. Furthermore, several previous writers have suggested that theories about coordination are likely to be important for designing cooperative work tools (e.g., Holt8], (Wino86]). We hope to suggest here, however, that the potential for fruitful interdisciplinary connections concerning coordination is much greater than has as yet been widely

Current processes and support systems for software requirements determination and analysis often neglect critical needs of important classes of stakeholders and limit themselves to concerns of the developers, users and customers. Besides developers, customers, and users, these stakeholders can include maintainers, interfacers, testers, product line managers, and sometimes members of the general public. This paper describes the results to date in researching and prototyping a Next Generation Process Model (NGPM) and support system (NGPSS) which directly addresses these issues. The NGPM emphasizes collaborative processes, involving all of the significant constituents with a stake in the software product. Its conceptual basis is a set of Theory W (win-win) extensions to the Spiral Model of software development. The Next-Generation Process Support System (NGPSS) is a groupware-oriented support capability for the NGPM. It enables an approach for collaborative win-condition elicitation and r...

The Spiral Model of software development [Boehm, 1988] begins each cycle of the spiral by performing the next level of elaboration of the prospective system's objectives, constraints, and alternatives. A primary difficulty in applying the spiral model has been the lack of explicit process guidance in determining these objectives, constraints, and alternatives. This paper presents an extension of the spiral model, called the Next Generation Process Model (NGPM), which uses the Theory W (win-win) approach [Boehm-Ross, 1989] to converge on a system's next-level objectives, constraints, and alternatives. This Theory W approach involves identifying the system's stakeholders and their win conditions, and using negotiation processes to determine a mutually satisfactory set of objectives, constraints, and alternatives among the stakeholders. This paper provides a summary of the resulting NGPM. It reports on experiences in applying it to a large Department of Defense program; in developing and experimenting with an initial support system for it; and in developing a refined model and support system based on the results of the experiment. The paper also compares the NGPM approach with related work in collaborative software processes and computer supported cooperative

Many researchers have proposed representational schemes to capture complex reasoned discourses. In this paper, we use our experiences with argument representation to examine some of the issues affecting the design of these representational schemes. Our discussions focus on how well a particular scheme, Toulmin structures, maps into the domain of argumentative discourse and captures and highlights various phenomena we consider central to argumentation. We then use this analysis to explore several complementary representational schemes. Finally, we discuss some relatively unexplored factors that influence the usability of these schemes. 1.

A design rationale (DR) is a representation of the reasoning behind the design of a system. One of the primary goals in developing a usable DR environment is minimising the cognitive overhead of representing design deliberation in a structured form. This paper examines some of the cognitive attributes of various DR notations, focussing on how generic cognitive dimensions of notations can be operationalised to clarify the relationship between DR notations and the DR authoring process. It is shown how cognitive dimensions analysis makes explicit some of the requirements for DR authoring environments, highlighting the importance of supporting intermediate DR representations; these ‘rough DRs ’ evolve as design reasoning unfolds, to reflect new perspectives on the design space.

Early work on the NONLIN and O-Plan projects indicated a need for a defined methodology which would guide users performing various roles in the acquisition and analysis of domain requirements for planning. This work included links to a requirement analysis methodology, CORE (COntrolled Requirements Expression) , tool support via an intelligent assistant as part of the Task Formalism (TF) Workstation and an initial collection of guidelines and checklists to aid in using the TF domain description language. This paper describes work underway to follow-on from this past research and to infuse it with knowledge gained from recent research related to planning domain development, knowledge modelling, design rationale and ontological and requirements engineering. Introduction The activities involved in discovering, engineering, documenting, and maintaining a set of domain constructs for most AI planning-based projects can be considered ad hoc and disorganised, at best. The current sources for...

Many efforts have been made to exploit the properties of graphical notations to support argument construction and communication. In the context of design rationale capture, we are interested in graphical argumentation structures as cognitive tools to support individual and collaborative design in real time. This context of use requires a detailed understanding of how a new representational structure integrates into the cognitive and discursive flow of design, that is, whether it provides supportive or intrusive structure. This paper presents a use-oriented analysis of a graphical argumentation notation (QOC). Through a series of empirical studies, we show that it provides most support when elaborating poorly understood design spaces, but is a distraction when evaluating well constrained design spaces. This is explained in terms of the cognitive compatibility between argumentative reasoning and the demands of different modes of designing. We then provide an account based the collaborative affordances of QOC in group design meetings, and extend this to discuss the evolution of QOC argumentation from short term working memory to long term group memory.

Present-day software applications are increasingly required to be #reuse-conscious" in terms of the operating platforms, topology and evolutionary requirements. Traditionally, there has been much dif- #culty in communicating specialized knowledge like design intents, design recommendations and design justi#cations in the discipline of software engineering. This paper presents a methodology based on the combination of design rationale and design patterns to design reusable software systems. Design rationale is the representation of the reasoning behind the design of an artifact. Design patterns are descriptions of communicating objects and classes that are customized to solve a general design problem in a particular context. The paper details the use of an explicit software development process to capture and disseminate the specialized knowledge #i.e., intents, recommendations and justi#cations# that augments the description of the cases in a library #i.e., design patterns# dur...

The complexity and usefulness of large information systems are determined partly by their functionality, i.e., what they do, and partly by global constraints on their accuracy, security, cost, user-friendliness, performance, and the like. Even with the growing interest in developing higher-level models and design paradigms, current technology is inadequate both representationally for expressing such global constraints as formal non-functional requirements and methodologically for utilizing them in generating designs. We propose both a representational and methodological framework for non-functional requirements, focusing on accuracy requirements. With the premise that accuracy is an inherent semantic attribute of information, we take a first step towards establishing a representational basis for accuracy. To guide the design process and justify design decisions, we propose a goal-oriented methodology. In the methodology, accuracy requirements are treated as (potentially conflicting) go...

Traditional approaches to plan representation focused on the generation of a sequence of actions and orderings. Knowledge rich models, which incorporate plan rationale, provide benefits to the planning process in a number of ways. The use of rationale in planning is reviewed in terms of causality, dependencies, and decisions. Each dimension addresses practical issues in the planning process and adds value to the resultant plan. The contribution of this paper is to explore this categorisation and to motivate the need to explicitly record and represent rationale knowledge for situated, mixed-initiative planning systems. 1 Introduction Planning is one of the oldest areas of research in Artificial Intelligence. The traditional view of the class of problems that a planner is expected to solve is: given a description of an initial world state, goal state, and domain, produce a sequence of actions that transforms the initial state to the goal state. Over time, several approaches have been de...