Flexible coordination with cooperative hypermedia

In current workflow and groupware systems, there is a gap between formal and informal coordination mechanisms. To fill the gap, flexible coordination support covers the whole spectrum of informal and formal coordination mechanisms. In this paper, a flexible coordination model integrating formal and informal coordination mechanisms is presented. Methods of using cooperative hypermedia concepts to uniformly model all objects representing coordination mediums and shared artifacts are described. Using the proposed model and methods, a cooperative hypermedia system (CHIPS), that offers flexible coordination support has been implemented. An application example of the system shows how a set of tasks and different coordination mechanisms are integrated into a cooperative process. This work demonstrates that cooperative hypermedia can serve as a bridge to close the gap.