inContext: Unleash Team Power:
(The project brochure is available for download from here)
The development and application of knowledge in the modern world necessarily involves the employment of increasing numbers of Knowledge Workers. These key people increasingly operate in new kinds of organisational structures and work patterns that require a large amount of inter-organisational activity in terms of technology and communication. Their work interaction patterns require highly dynamic forms of effective team collaboration/communication, which we have classified as ranging from Nimble (short-lived) to Virtual and Mobile/Nomadic Teams.
There is a considerable amount of flexibility in these activities. Teams transform themselves from one kind of organizational structure to another – indeed, in most cases, workers engage in many such teams simultaneously.
This pattern of working demand creates a requirement for support from adequate collaborative software services. To meet the requirements of dynamic, multiform team working, current Internet-based Collaboration Working Environments must evolve towards large-scale, loosely-coupled, trusted service-oriented systems of effective team collaboration, with increased emphasis on P2P collaborative software capabilities.
inContext will develop a novel scientific approach to this situation, which is focused on a new blend of human collaboration and service-oriented systems, designed to explore two basic research strands:
In addressing these issues, inContext will explore novel techniques and algorithms for developing an understanding of the human activities involved. It will then provide context-relevant services, at the right time and granularity, to harness modern technology and communication and empower the knowledge workers who are acting as interactive partners in those various teams. To this end, appropriate representation models will be created and autonomic service adaptation methods will be employed to produce a system that takes account of the diversity of the team members and facilitates teamwork, effective team collaboration/communication, and interaction.
Universities, corporate research centres and SMEs from six countries will work together to develop the research that will deliver the new technology.
Two end-user partners – a worldwide manufacturing corporate and an association of public administration – will provide the reference environments for investigation and concrete validation of the outcomes of the project.
The start date of this project was 1st May 2006 and it will run for 30 months.
The Shared Workspace for inContext team members can be found here . Username and password required.
Page last updated 23/03/2009 16:39 by Pete Kendal
