Advanced functions in inter-organisation project management tools

The Esprit GOAL Project (Esprit 6283) aims to develop a new generation of generic software tools to support a new project management paradigm: the `extended enterprise´. Some distinguishing characteristics of projects in the new paradigm are that they are collaborative, decentralised, and inter-organisational. The approach of GOAL is to build a customisable GOAL kernel, called the GOAL information model, which acts as a data repository, common interface and service provider. The information model will admit the federation of existing project management tools and other applications, and the addition of advanced functions required to satisfy given user requirements. The work reported focuses on the first phase in the `advanced research´ stream of the GOAL project. The objective was to investigate how a range of artificial intelligence technologies, successful in their own right, can be incorporated in tools for organisational modelling, for the provision of advanced functions, and for addressing the generic issues in the extended enterprise