Integrating groupware and process technologies in the Oz environment

Human-to-human collaboration is critical in any multi-user, multi-organization development process. The CSCW community has already produced extensive work on modeling and supporting collaboration between members of a (possibly geographically dispersed) team. Now that high-speed networks and a sophisticated communication infrastructure (the Internet) have made CSCW technologies more feasible, we are studying how process technologies can embrace them. This position paper focuses on process support for interactions of multiple human users. This is in contrast to work on development of multi-user/CSCW tools and supporting generic human-computer interaction. Finding the appropriate balance between intergroup collaboration and autonomy is beyond the scope of this paper. The in-progress work described here is being implemented in the Oz decentralized Process Centered Environment (PCE)