Lifecycle-based Task Management Support for Knowledge-intensive Processes

Universität Ulm

Fakultätsöffentliche Vorstellung des Promotionsvorhabens (Grüner Vortrag), Nicolas Mundbrod, Ort: O27/123, Datum: 06.12.2017, Zeit: 16:15 Uhr

The operational support of knowledge-intensive processes (KiPs) constitutes a big challenge. As KiPs are emergent and unpredictable by nature, they are driven by knowledge workers utilizing their skills, experiences and expertise. For coordinating and synchronizing their work, knowledge workers rely on task lists, such as to-do lists, task sheets, or checklists. Though these means are intuitive and prevalent, their current implementations are highly ineffective and error-prone. Task lists and tasks are not managed in an explicit, synchronized and domain-specific manner. In addition, no lifecycle support is provided and media disruptions aggravate task management in the scope of KiPs. As a consequence, knowledge workers spend much time for inefficient and redundant work as their efforts are not preserved and exploited for optimizing future KiPs.

In this talk, the proCollab approach is presented, aiming at the flexible, lifecycle-based task management support for knowledge-intensive processes. To provide such a support, proCollab relies on the generic key components of processes, task trees and tasks, which each are further distinguished in templates and instances. Based on a specialization concept, proCollab processes may be customized to constitute KiPs in the shape of projects and cases, while generic task trees and tasks support required digital task lists of any kind. To further enhance the approach, it additionally contains a sophisticated state management concept realizing domain-specific states as well as a configuration concept that supports knowledge workers to configure task lists at design and run time. Overall, proCollab fosters knowledge workers’ coordination, increases work awareness, reduces media disruptions, and enables the reuse of valuable coordination efforts and knowledge.