Collaboration life cycle

This paper is about presenting a new conceptual and methodological framework to collaboration: the Collaboration Life Cycle (CLC). It is based on CSCW concepts, participation principles and predefined processes in certain work environments. It describes how collaboration can occur and tries to help people to create and run a collaborative environment. Through this, it systemises collaboration processes in coordinated work environments. Its four phases - initiation, formation, operation and decomposition - are interlinked to each other and contain several tasks and subtasks. To carry out these tasks specific roles are defined. Depending on the nature of the collaboration process there are workflow- and artefact-based CLC. On the one hand, CLC can be used to study and analyse an existing collaboration project to identify problems, inefficiencies and attention points for improvement. This paper shows an example of such an analysis. On the other hand, experiences and future plans resulted by the deployment of an earlier version of CLC are described before concluding the paper.