Supporting dynamic interdependencies among collaborative activities

Abstract

Real-life work requirements seldom result in tasks being truly independent. Instead, webs of interdependencies evolve among tasks in a fashion which is sometimes predictable, but often completely ad hoc. In this paper we are concerned with both uncovering a family of basic concepts and mechanisms that can be used to support the mixture of anticipated and ad hoc dependencies that can arise among tasks and describing the reification of these concepts through our Obligation System implemented within the prototype collaboration support environment ConversationBuilder.