Support Collaboration with Roles

This chapter determines the requirements for roles by examining collaboration in a group. Roles are fundamental tools to support collaboration activities. It considers "collaboration" as a generalized concept. The chapter denotes collaboration in the following categories: among people, that is, natural collaboration; among people through systems, that is, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW); among people and systems, that is, human-computer interaction (HCI); among systems, that is, distributed and collaborative systems. Roles can be made to facilitate an organizational structure, provide orderly system behavior, and consolidate system security for both human and non-human entities that collaborate and coordinate their activities with or within systems. Because the roles have inherent advantages to facilitate collaboration, a role-based collaboration (RBC) methodology was proposed. The E-CARGO model is an abstract structure based on roles for a group of people and agents involved in collaboration or team work.