CoFra: Towards Structurally Selecting ICT Tools and Methods in Multidisciplinary Distributed Projects

Abstract

ICT tools and working methods are important to effectively work together in cross-organizational, multi-disciplinary projects. At the moment, there is no or very limited support to enable sharing knowledge about which ICT tools to use for collaboration and how to use them. In this paper we propose CoFra, a collaboration framework that facilitates stakeholders to share knowledge about ICT tools and work practices to improve the collaboration in dispersed multidisciplinary teams. CoFra supports two main mechanisms: collaboration variables identifying characteristics of ICT tools and workflow to express best practices. Two prototype applications were created based upon the framework. A first user evaluation of these prototype applications shows that (1) the defined collaboration variables used are relevant and useful in the selection of ICT tool support and (2) that workflow depiction can improve knowledge sharing practices over traditional wiki usage.