Practice and usage-oriented service adaptation: An integrated design method for collaborative work in construction projects

Abstract

Practitioners of the construction sector require improved Information Technology (IT) Services to support their collaborative work. In usual service design processes, business experts gather requirements and collaborate with designers (e.g. Software Engineers or HCI experts) through modeling phases to develop adapted solutions. Our main hypothesis is that improving modeling and mapping of these different perspectives will enhance such service's design processes. Based on the analysis of parallel research fields, this paper addresses this issue, and proposes a method to adapt IT-supported services to business practices. This method is based on a structured approach aiming at (1) identifying Collective Practices, (2) focusing on actors' Individual Practices and Operations, (3) distinguishing different technology-related Usages and finally (4) selecting or designing adapted IT services relying on previous analysis. An example based on sustainable project practices illustrates the approach. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.