EFFECTIVE ANALYSIS METHOD BY REUSING MCM FOR COLLABORATION TASK

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Kawabata, Ryo | Hasegawa, Akiko | Itoh, Kiyoshi

Affiliations: Laboratory of Information and Systems Engineering, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract: It is important to analyze systems in terms of collaboration tasks because the task is often observed in many systems. Collaboration tasks include various participants such as individuals, organizations and facilities. They perform activities by sharing and exchanging information and material. The authors employ a Multi-Context Map (MCM) for describing collaboration tasks. An MCM is described by connecting Context maps (CM) which have multiple perspectives. An MCM is an effective method for analyzing and describing collaboration task. The authors propose the method for describing collaboration tasks by reusing MCM. It is effective to reuse MCM for describing a new MCM, because the similar tasks can be performed in some other systems. Same kinds of Perspectives, Information, Tokens and Materials can be used in the task. The tasks can be represented by a cascade of three or four CMs. The reusable task can be found in terms of the combination of two or three perspectives. The names of the components such as perspectives, activities, etc. can be represented by using synonyms. It is possible to identify these components by using the thesaurus. The navigation tool for supporting the process is developed.

Keywords: collaboration task, reuse, system analysis

Journal: Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 107-118, 2004