From telework project planning to project co-ordination, an integrated approach

Abstract

This paper focuses on the telework support to the so-called SmallInformation-based Organisations, where all activities involveinformation processing and transfer, usually among sub-contractedteleworkers. Most of these companies run by managing multiple parallelprojects, i.e. one-of-a-kind business processes, each project usuallyinvolving remote activity execution by teleworkers. There is therefore aclear demand for workflow management systems supporting telework,featuring facilities that further enhance traditional office automationsystems by filling the required support to geographically distributedco-operative work. The work presented was undertaken during a teleworkworkflow management system requirements' specification, to support theso-called Small Information-based Organisations. To this end, weanalysed the virtual enterprise life cycle, identifying the requiredmodelling tool types for each of the required steps. The consecutiveproject steps from project planning to co-ordination were thenidentified, with special relevance to the definition of the so-calledexecution primitives and to the support of human interaction through thespeech-act theory. This approach allowed the description of a consistentlife-cycle approach from project planning to coordination.