Research on a Service-Oriented Approach to Groupware Design

A service-oriented approach to design groupware is proposed, focusing on the behavior a groupware application has to provide to co-operating people. The approach allows groupware designers, as well as end users, to select and combine the groupware behavior that matches a collaborative setting. For these different target groups, the approach identifies two distinct levels of granularity to select and compose groupware behavior. These are described on two levels, the elements each level consists of, as well as the relations between the elements. The result is described in a reference model for groupware. The service-oriented approach stimulates groupware designers to capitalize on the behavior, i.e., the service a groupware application has to provide to support collaboration, before switching to implementation details. The SmartGroup groupware reference model is built to give an abstract description of the behavior groupware which has to provide to support collaborating people, in terms of groupware services and the relations between these services.