Supporting social interaction activities of software processes

Abstract

An analysis of the the current state-of-the-art in the field of process-oriented approaches and process-centered environments demonstrates that most of the proposals in this area only consider technical activities and neglect social interaction activities, such as “exploring possibilities” or “negotiated coordinations”. In the field of groupware, and more specifically of conversation-oriented approaches, there exist some specific solutions to provide model driven assistance for social interactions. This paper aims to discuss the possible routes to enrich process-oriented approaches and process-centered environments by integrating ideas and technologies coming from conversation-oriented approaches in order to support both social interactions and technical activities. First experiments and proposals are described dealing with conversations “within the process”, i.e. concerning the artifacts, and conversations “about the process”, i.e. concerning the software process course and the software process model evolution.