Experiences of using different communication styles in business process support systems with the shared spaces architecture

Abstract

Though the concept of shared spaces had been known for quite a while, it did not become popular until the arrival of the internet and social software. Via this way, the concept has penetrated other IT-areas, including the area of Business Process Management, which brings about the needs of investigating the usage of shared spaces in connection to Business Process Support (BPS). The first part of this experience report describes the authors' experience of building, introducing in the operational practice, and using BPS systems based on the shared spaces architecture. It presents three examples of applications aimed at supporting collaboration/communication in the frame of business process instances. These systems use three different mechanisms for arranging communication/collaboration. The first system is based on collaborative planning; the second one is based on the specialized structure of the shared spaces, and the third one on changes in the status of the processes. The second part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of the examples from the first part in order to create a preliminary taxonomy of communication styles in systems with shared spaces architecture. For this end, the authors identified three binary parameters that characterize the way invitations to visit a shared space are issued. These parameters can be used for analyzing communication capabilities of BPS systems, as well as other types of computer systems, with the shared spaces architecture. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.