Pattern-based guidelines for coordination engineering

Abstract

Abstract. This paper focuses on coordination engineering. We state that coordination engineering can be approached through a double point of view. On the one hand, coordination problems are recurrent and on the other hand, tested forms of coordination exist. We define a typology of coordination problems that can be solved by the enforcement of well known coordination forms. We highlight a correlation between our approach and the context-problem-solution formulation of patterns. We present a catalogue of coordination patterns that makes an inventory of a set of coordination problems, and a set of solutions that describe how these problems can be solved. After describing an example of coordination pattern, we finally present guidelines that use the catalogue in a framework of process coordination engineering.