Extending Groupware Task Analysis:
Adding Further Dimensions to Analysis of Cooperative Work
Gerrit van der Veer*), Roland Traunmüller**) and Maria Wimmer**)
*) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science,
de Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, NL
++31 20 44 477 64
gerrit@cs.vu.nl
**) University of Linz,
Dep. of Computer Science,
Altenbergerstr. 69, A-4040 Linz, AT
++43 732 2468 881
{traunm, wimmer}@ifs.uni-linz.ac.at
ABSTRACT
The importance of systems that support coordination,
collaboration and decision making between and within
different working groups is increasing dramatically,
especially in the area of office automation. CSCW is the
paradigm providing these facilities in an organization-wide
environment. The early stages of systems design are very
important to the success of such systems. In this paper we
discuss the general structure of interactive systems to-bedesigned and their place in organizational environments.
Components and interaction interfaces of this cooperative
work arrangement (at system and organizational levels) as
well as interrelations between different components are made
explicit. For this, a business process and workflow model is
adapted to describe organizational factors and dynamic
behavior.
The improved Groupware Task Analysis (GTA) approach
provides the ability to represent different kinds of processes
thereby giving the designer a better overview of the task
world. Furthermore, it contains concepts for modeling
organizational factors like higher-level business goals,
formal and informal communication, and authority structures
to describe overall dependencies and relations. It also allows
representing dynamic behavior as it includes time aspects
and event occurrences. So, the extended GTA provides
holistic design consideration from an organization-wide
point of view thereby allowing multiple views as needed in
the design of Groupware.
working, and the need for making decisions increases on
every level. These trends may be seen as major challenges to
informatics, demarcating action: urging enhanced integration
of data and systems; redefining information interchange;
improving
existing
software
with
supplementary
functionality; building entire new types of support systems;
and creating a consistent user interface for different software
systems.
KEYWORDS
CSCW, Groupware, Groupware Task Analysis (GTA),
organizational issues, Workflow, design
Interactive systems in discussion
The actual world of business shows that analysis has to
broaden its scope. New organizational concepts have been
implemented with an overall trend towards restructuring and
segmentation of organizations under diverse labels such as
New Public Management [1]. Some larger organizations
have flattened their hierarchies and evolved into highly selforganized groups governed by the setting of goals. Such
structural reorganizations change the requirements for ITsupport: cooperation becomes the predominant mode for
Design approaches for interactive systems
Early support systems (application systems and DBs)
focused on task automation and used conventional systems
analysis and design methods, which were functionally
oriented. These IT support systems have evolved in stages to
keep pace with emerging business needs and advancing
technologies. The applied analysis and design methods have
changed, too [2].
Resulting from the weaknesses of single task support
systems, coordination mechanisms were established focusing
on process automation. These workflow, calendar or project
management systems were designed using task analysis
methods. At the same time, support for collaboration
between users was demanded. HCI research contributed user
integrated analysis and design methods for understanding,
modeling, and implementing group facilities. Groupware
systems are well known and sometimes used as a synonym
for CSCW systems. A distinction may be useful: Groupware
systems, as such, realize collaboration and cooperation
among groups via the underlying technology (several users
are elaborating on a shared object at the same/different
places and at the same/different time) [3]. CSCW systems
are the advanced generation of Groupware and Workflow
concepts integrating coordination, collaboration, cooperation
and decision making on an organization-wide level [5]. The
overall development of IT-support as claimed in the CSCW
paradigm is directed towards integral systems and holistic
design approaches.
GTA [4] in its initial version is a design approach, which
aims at modeling the task domain for Groupware. Some of
its highlights are the use of ethnography, starting design from
the current work situation, and then improving the task
model iteratively via enlarging the model, evaluating the
improvements and doing further analysis in respect to the
design model. A weakness of this previous GTA approach is  An additional topic to be included is given by metathat it uses limited viewpoints as it considers only a part of
information that might assist in various ways. Examples
the organization unit (the area of work only).
include organizational knowledge structuring application
domains, or group awareness influencing the course of
Broaden the perspective
discussion.
The organizations’ different units (further named as entities)
GTA revised
are needed and exist to be responsible for achieving the
overall business goals. Our improved GTA approach In summary, the original GTA used the concepts of people
provides a holistic design concept by recognizing workflow, (roles and actors), work (tasks, task structures, and actions),
governance structure, strategic objectives, objects and data and situation(internal environment and objects). This
being in relation to other entities and belonging to the framework has been enlarged to include workflow (whole
organization. Designing interactive systems also includes process structure and dynamic behavior including time and
representations of dynamic behavior. This approach events) and organization (governance structure, formal and
considers entities like time and events occurring in the informal communication, strategic objectives, external
environment.
organization units).
Our extended GTA approach:
The optimized TM2 now provides multiple perspectives on
a) starts with analysis of the work situation in hand thereby workflow (former task structures), governance structure,
using ethnography and other analysis methods. Analysis higher-level business goals, objects/data (now with
is done in different problem domains considering also distinction), environment (broadened to include external
interdependencies of the areas. The results are a task stockholders like customers or banks), and relations between
model of the current work situation (TM1) as well as different perspectives. These perspectives can be considered
documentation of elicited problems and optimization from a meta level, from a certain perspective (structure of a
issues to be improved in the future work situation.
meta-entity) or from a detailed description of the
b) improves the task model by adding amendments as characteristics and relations of a certain entity.
solutions for the recognized problems, leading to an
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structures and procedures, which may exist based on
sound reasons or on resistance to change.
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