Task modelling for cooperative work

Modern work systems are characterized by a high amount of cooperation among working persons. Thus, task modelling for cooperative work is of great significance for an appropriate design of work systems. Due to the special characteristics of cooperative work, several requirements for the modelling technique have to be met. In this paper, first the requirements for a task modelling technique are derived and compared with existing approaches. Then, as no existing technique completely fulfils the important requirement for abstraction in order to model weakly structured activities , a new technique is presented, which is on the one hand essentially based on an existing modelling language for deterministic software intensive systems and on the other hand has been enlarged by additional concepts for being able to model tasks carried out cooperatively by human beings. The results of a case study in which the new technique has been applied are presented and discussed. Finally, an outlook towards future research co...