Active process model supported collaboration

We discuss the reuse of process knowledge through conceptualized workflow patterns. Knowledge reuse in the life-cycle of projects has been widely studied, but most known solutions focus on communication issues, isolated from the processes themselves. Due to the huge potential benefits from the immediate reuse of communicated information (e.g. architectural, structural solutions, details, technical specifications, etc.) most of the attention has been given to information retrieval techniques and contextualization of the retrieved information. Actual processes, actors and tools that have led to results of work usually remained unrecorded, since this was considered technically impossible. Indeed, in contrast to intuitive ad-hoc reuse of parts of documents that fit into a given context, ad-hoc reuse of parts of actual processes together with metadescriptors is not so straightforward. In the paper we identify the methods and media in which processes were modeled and executed as the main problem to achieve this goal. Based on analysis of process modeling techniques, we suggest a novel methodological approach and a conceptual solution for a prototype collaboration system supported by active process models. C o n st ru ct io n I n fo rm at ic s D ig it al L ib ra ry h tt p :/ /i tc .s ci x. n et