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In Collaborative Enterprise Modelling, participation of stakeholders is seen as a key success factor. However, getting and keeping the right stakeholders involved during the modelling process and obtaining acceptance and commitment to the results proves to be problematic in many Enterprise Modelling projects. Main causes for typical problems in EM project are lack of user involvement and user input, incomplete or changing requirements, and lack of management support. In this research, a number of main elements of EM, which require stakeholder commitment are identified. These elements may either be associated with the actual intent to pursue the ensisioned goal or associated with insight in the business and (business) requirements, which determines the ‘required level of commitment’. Based on the mechanisms influencing the required level of commitment, recommendations are made to enhance stakeholder commitment to each of the main elements in EM that has been identified.

This MSc research intends to use modelling method to represent collaboration system and develop improvement suggestions. The represented collaboration system is under the background of concurrent design process in ESA design projects. The whole research can be mainly separated into three parts. The first part is related to explore suitable collaboration model to represent collaboration system. The outcome of the first research part is the FRMC. The second part is related to use BPMN2.0 to represent the collaboration system in concurrent design process of ESA projects. The outcomes of the second research part are BPMN2.0 collaboration model and the argument about whether BPMN2.0 can effectively represent the collaboration in concurrent design process. The third part is related to the utility of collaboration models. The outcome of the third research part is improvement suggestions to the collaboration system in concurrent design process of ESA projects regarding to its current collaboration challenges and collaboration modelling results.

Collaboration is often presented as the solution to numerous problems in business and society. However, collaboration is challenging, and collaboration support is not an off-the-shelf-product. This research offers theoretical foundations for Collaboration Engineering. Collaboration Engineering is an approach to design and deploy high value recurring collaborative work practices that can be transferred to practitioners to execute for themselves without ongoing support from (external) professionals. We present a theory on the quality of a collaboration process design for Collaboration Engineering and offer support to design and transfer such process designs. Evaluating the supporting concepts, we found that practitioners that facilitated collaboration processes could achieve similar quality as professional facilitators. Our design approach, theory, and collaboration process building blocks (called thinkLets) can be used to develop new collaboration support systems, and can be used to transfer collaboration support skills. ThinkLets also offer a framework for research on patterns of collaboration at a higher level of detail, which will allow us to gain new insights in predictable, effective and efficient tools and techniques for collaboration support.

Today, engineering systems offer a variety of local and webbased applications to support collaboration by assisting groups in structuring activities, generating and sharing data, and improving group communication. To ensure the quality of collaboration, engineering system design needs to analyze and define possible collaboration processes. Currently, engineering system design focuses on collaboration processes in a static environment. However, today’s world is characterized by dynamic environments that can influence the requirements of a collaboration process and require to adapt the process during runtime. This paper introduces a new approach for engineering systems design that provides adaptive collaboration support for changing environments. This approach is based upon a conceptual architecture for engineering systems that uses data streams to analyze the dynamic environment and adapts a collaboration process on demand according to varying goals, time and data.

Lessons learned are one way to retain experience and knowledge in project-based organizations, helping them to prevent reinventin,g the wheel or to repeat past mistakes. However, there are several challenges that make these lessonts learned processes a challenging endeavor. These include capturing knowledge about project mai!Iagement, allowing learning from mistakes, and handling the group processes within the project team. We introduce a novel approach combining elements from storytelling, root cause analysis, and collaboration engineering to address these challenges, and report on first experiences utiliziing this approach in a project in the oil and gas industry.

This paper presents a training approach to support the deployment of collaboration process support according to the Collaboration Engineering approach. In Collaboration Engineering, practitioners in an organization are trained to facilitate a specific collaborative work practice on a recurring basis. To transfer the complex skill set of a facilitator to support the practitioner in guiding a specific collaboration process design, we propose a detailed training approach based on the logic of Cognitive Load Theory. The training approach focuses on transferring knowledge and skills in the form of thinkLets, i.e. repeatable facilitation techniques. Furthermore, the training contains a process simulation to practice challenges in collaboration support. The training approach was positively evaluated using a questionnaire instrument in a case study.

With the trends in the use of social software and social media, a more informal and democratic online culture is developing, especially in younger generations. This culture is increasingly conflicting with traditional teaching styles. One of these trends involves the introduction of more democratic and participatory interaction styles in daily activities, online and for larger communities. E-democracy tools and methods could be an important means to facilitate e-democracy in traditional education. However, e-democracy poses a number of challenges, which require careful consideration when implementing a democratic process. One of the disciplines that can offer solutions to these challenges is the facilitation of group and collaboration processes with the use of Group Support Systems. A recent development in this area of research is the use of design patterns to document techniques for collaboration. In this paper we present a set of design patterns for the facilitation of e-democracy, that can be used in traditional education.

Organizations increasingly use collaborative teams in order to create value for their stakeholders. This trend has given rise to a new research field: Collaboration Engineering. The goal of Collaboration Engineering is to design and deploy processes for high-value recurring collaborative tasks, and to design these processes such that practitioners can execute them successfully without the intervention of professional facilitators. One of the key concepts in Collaboration Engineering is the thinkLet – a codified facilitation technique that creates a predictable pattern of collaboration. Because thinkLets produce a predictable pattern of interactions among people working together toward a goal they can be used as snap-together building blocks for team process designs. This paper presents an analysis of the thinkLet concept and proposes a conceptual object model of a thinkLet that may inform further developments in Collaboration Engineering.

Collaboration Engineering is an approach for the design and deployment of repeatable collaboration processes that can be executed by practitioners without the support of collaboration professionals such as facilitators. A critical challenge in Collaboration Engineering concerns how the design activities have to be executed and which design choices have to be made to create a process design. We report on a four year design science study, in which we developed a design approach for Collaboration Engineering thatincorporates existing process design methods, pattern based design principles, and insights from expert facilitators regarding design challenges and choices. The resulting approach was evaluated and continuously improved in four trials with 37 students. Our findings suggest that this approach is useful to support the design of repeatable collaboration processes. Our study further serves as an example of how a design approach can be developed and improved following a multi-method design science approach.