Collaborative virtual environments - what next?

Abstract

As work becomes increasingly geographically dispersed over time zones and cultures, new types of environments are needed that make collaboration in these conditions more productive and more enjoyable. In this contribution, we list some of the issues that we have tentatively identified and that we used to conclude that Collaborative Virtual Environments are ideally suited for this purpose. We then very briefly describe a working CVE framework that we have developed to address the issues that we have raised. The main point of the paper is an admission of the ad hoc nature of our work and a plea for the development of solid understanding of collaborative work in the area of software development that could be used to construct a realistically grounded collaborative environment.