Supporting Virtual Team Collaboration: The TeamSCOPE System

Transcription

1 Supporting Virtua Team Coaboration: The TeamSCOPE System Visiting Facuty Technoogy, Poicy and Management Deft University of Technoogy Deft, The Netherands Chares Steinfied 72, Chyng-Yang Jang2, Ben Pfaff3 2Department of Teecommunication 3Department of Eectrica and Computer Engineering Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824, USA { ABSTRACT In this paper, we describe a coaborative system specificay designed to address probems faced by distributed (or virtua) teams. TeamSCOPE (Team Software for a Coaborative Project Environment) is a web-based work environment that has emerged from a research project studying the communication needs of internationay distributed engineering design teams. The paper begins by outining some of the needs of virtua teams. An integrative framework that focuses on faciitation of group members awareness of group activities, communications and resources is proposed. These needs and awareness requirements are then transated into a set of coaborative system design goas which have guided the impementation of TeamSCOPE. The features of TeamSCOPE are briefy reviewed, and some preiminary observations from eary users are provided. We concude by noting some of the new features panned for TeamSCOPE based on our eary trias. Keywords Virtua team, CSCW, distributed group, groupware, coaborative systems. INTRODUCTION Improvements in communications toos have encouraged many organizations to aocate tasks to groups of empoyees that are distributed rather than co-ocated [25]. Such virtua teams enabe organizations to take advantage of the particuar skis and expertise of workers without incurring substantia trave or reocation costs, and have thus become an important focus of researcher and manageria attention [o, 22, 293. However, achieving coordinated activity in group work, aready difficut for coocated teams [26], is even more chaenging for physicay distributed groups [9, 111. When group members are ocated at great distances from each other, the opportunities for face-to-face ~~~~ksion to nuke digita or hard copies of a or part ofthis \vvork for personai or cassroom USC is grancd without f ec provided that copies are Iot made or distributed for profit or commercia advantage and that copies bear this notice and the fu citation on the first page. I O copy otherkse. to repubish, to post on wwrs or to redistribute to ists, requires prior speciic permission and/or a e. GROUP 99 Phoenix Arizona USA Copyright ACM /99/1 1...$5.00 coaboration are infrequent, if not nonexistent. As a resut, team members are dependent on mediated interactions for coordination, and are ikey to face important deficits in the information they have about the day-to-day activities of their teammates. Athough many new forms of mediated communications exist to support distributed groups, simpe access to communication media aone is insufficient to promote the intense coaborative activity that co-ocated teams often have. Scheduing probems, ack of communication discipine, cognitive overoad, high communications costs, and deayed responses are just a few of the obstaces that imit the effectiveness of various communications media [9, 181. The danger is that physicay dispersed groups wi resort to a coordination strategy that essentiay minimizes their needs for interaction, primariy by dividing up tasks in such a way that frequent coaboration is not needed [9]. As Fusse and coeagues note, this is a particuary poor strategy for groups operating in changing environments. In this paper, we describe a coaborative system specificay designed to address probems faced by distributed (or virtua) teams. TeamSCOPE (Software for a Coaborative Project Environment) is a web-based work environment that has emerged from a research project studying the communication needs of internationay distributed engineering design teams [27]. The paper begins by outining some of the needs of virtua teams. An integrative framework that focuses on faciitation of group members awareness of group activities, communications and resources is then reviewed. These needs and awareness requirements are then transated into a set of coaborative system design goas which have guided the impementation of TeamSCOPE. The features of TeamSCOPE are briefy reviewed, and some preiminary observations from eary users are provided. We concude by noting some of the new features panned for TeamSCOPE based on our eary trias. NEEDS OF VIRTUAL GROUPS At the most basic eve, we can consider any group characterized by having members in different ocations to be virtua. Pamer and Speier [22] defined virtuaness as 81

2 the degree of proximity in terms of ocations, work cyces, and cutures and suggested that virtuaness wi introduce potentia coordination costs. Today, gobay distributed teams in mutinationa organizations operate across time zones, have differentia access to communications infrastructure and services, and work in very different organizationa and cutura contexts. A of these factors infuence the kinds of coordination and communication needs encountered by the virtua teams. Beow, we briefy highight five types of needs that arise. Virtua teams need to share information in a variety of forms, incuding documents, designs and pictures of objects. In addition to the basic abiity to transmit digita fies to each other, distributed group membeis require a common pace accessibe by a where digita representations of group artifacts can be stored and retrieved. Rea-time interaction is essentia for providing rapid feedback and supporting back and forth interactions during periods of intense discussion under time pressure. Moreover, research suggests that in ambiguous or confictfu situations, rich, rea-time media may be more ikey to prevent misunderstandings [30]. In addition to basic access to synchronous media such as audio or video conferencing, resources to support effective team use are necessary. Finding common meeting times is aways an issue in group work. However, scheduing difficuties can be compounded by the need to share access to potentiay scarce resources such as video conferencing faciities that are not yet avaiabe on everyone s desktop. When team members are spread across distant time zones, this scheduing probem is exacerbated by the imited windows for rea time coaboration. Virtua teams need hep in faciitating spontaneous and informa rea-time interaction. Because of the need to schedue group meetings in advance, the opportunities for spontaneous and informa rea time interactions are imited in distributed groups. Spontaneous encounters are virtuay non-existent with gobay distributed teams, given the barriers of distance and time zones. The importance of unpanned and spontaneous interactions for improving group performance, particuary in R&D environments, has been we documented and the subject of a number of nove coaborative technoogy designs [ 1, 121 [6, 16, 241. In addition to enabing conversations that can stimuate ideas reated to project work, casua encounters can aso be conduits for a host of project coordination activities, such as panning, scheduing and task aocation. Maintaining awareness of the day-to-day projectreated activities of group members is another need of distributed groups, since they have itte opportunity to physicay observe what one another are actuay doing. Unike groups working in the same office, who can easiy provide updates to each other during routine daiy encounters, distributed groups often go ong periods during which they have no information about their team members activities. As a resut, each member of the group has to make expicit efforts to request information from team members, and to aert others about his or her own activities. At best, these additiona information transactions add to the costs of coordination, both in terms of time and effort, as we in the potentia for cognitive overoad [9, 261. At worst, the ack of information about others activities can actuay harm group morae, such as when team members assume their coeagues are inactive when they have not heard from them.. Virtua teams face difficuties overcoming heterogeneous and often incompatibe technoogy infrastructures. Team members may use computers with different operating systems or appications software, and network infrastructures may vary widey, giving more capabiity to team members in some ocations than others. Lack of a harmonized infrastructure increases the effort that distributed groups must make to maintain contact and share information. Impications for Coaborative System Design Ceary, distributed and virtua teams face significant chaenges to achieving coordinated activity, resuting from their fragmented work environment. Each of the needs above suggests specific impications for coaborative system design. The need to recognize information in a variety of forms suggests that coaborative systems that ony emphasize a singe appication are unikey to address a the needs of distributed groups. Not ony must systems faciitate the transfer of mutipie types of information, but they aso must be capabe of storage and retrieva of mutipe types of group artifacts. The need to arrange for rea-time interaction under difficut scheduing situations aso suggests some of the needed capabiities for coaborative systems in very dispersed groups. Scheduing support, with recognition of conficts in schedues is ikey to be an essentia feature. To achieve spontaneous and informa interactions, coaborative systems must essentiay know about the avaiabiities of group members and aert members to potentia interaction opportunities. The Becore Cruiser system [6], ICQ. and AOL Instant Messenger are a exampes of this type of functionaity. 82

3 A coaborative system that heps group members maintain awareness of each other s activities requires the capabiity to monitor actions of interest and aert users when they occur. The Awareness Monitor [9] is an exampe of a system that accompishes this. Coping with heterogeneous networks, software, and termina devices requires a coaborative system that is not dependent on speciaized hardware and software, and runs over a common network types. Highy distributed, and mobie groups require coaborative toos that have ubiquitous accessibiity. Coectivey, these impications suggest that it woud be difficut to consoidate a the aternative toos and appications into a singe coaboration system. Yet, as pointed out by Oson and Teasey [21], the CSCW research iterature is rich in singe appication studies, such as studies about emai, video conferencing, and co-authoring toos. The advantage of this approach is to reduce users efforts in managing severa toos. However, individua communication appications are treated independenty, and any potentia synergies that might resut from systems that expicity recognize aternative communications are ost. A coaborative system might, for exampe, recognize aternative communications media to which mutipe groups have access, and ensure that scheduing conficts are avoided. Coaborative systems incude peope, tasks, shared objects, communication media, coaborative software toos, and the work environments of the group. We expicity recognize that coaborative toos are ony parts of the coaborative system. The reationship between a coaborative too and the other components of the system shoud be considered. Our approach regarding the design of a coaborative too thus emphasizes suppementing an existing system of aternative media and toos rather than creating a new a-encompassing system of its own. In essence, these design impications a focus on the need for a network of coaborative toos, hed together by a muti-function appication that monitors a variety of information reevant to the group s abiity to act in a coordinated fashion. Such a centra appication woud hep the groups maintain awareness of fie-reated activities, group communication attempts, schedues, and avaiabiities of peope and resources. The concept of awareness in this context thus becomes very centra for coordinated activity. AWARENESS AS AN 1NTERGRATNG FRAMEWORK In the context of group work, awareness usuay refers to the information about the activities of other group members [7, 13, 191. Researchers in the CSCW community have ong recognized the importance of awareness in faciitating coaborative work [7, 9, 11, 14, 281. Emphasizing the interdependent nature of coaboration, awareness was thought to be required for coordination of group work [7]. As Gutwin, Roseman and Greenberg [13] pointed out, workspace awareness reduces the effort needed to coordinate tasks and resources, heps peope move between individua and shared activities, provides a context in which to interpret utterances, and aows anticipation of others actions. Awareness is thus a usefu integrating framework to ink different components of a coaborative system. We consider awareness as occurring when group members possess knowedge about the current status and actions of the various components (incuding peope) in a coaborative system. At a basic eve, an awareness mechanism focuses on the gathering and deivering of awareness information. It aso may go a bit further and provide possibe suggested actions for group members based on particuar conditions that are sensed, such as the avaiabiity of individuas for a rea-time interaction. In this section, we introduce some of the types of information that an awareness mechanism might gather and deiver, the aternative ways in which it might be deivered to group members, the approaches a system might use to gather awareness data, and the responses a group member might take when provided with awareness data. Types of awareness data Activity awareness Knowedge about the projected reated activities of other group members is a basic type of awareness information. During rea-time coaboration, this may simpy mean knowing what actions others are taking at any given moment. Most synchronous coaboration toos thus focus on the on-going activities (e.g. [13]). However, much group-reated activity, such as editing documents, occurs outside synchronous meetings. Asynchronous groupware, such as BSCW [3] and most software deveopment toos, often provide awareness of past events by making the og fies avaiabe. It is especiay hepfu for group members to be cognizant of any modifications to shared objects such as documents or designs. Avaiabiity awareness Many groupware appications monitor avaiabiity of peope in order to faciitate informa encounters or socia interaction incuding Cruiser [6], Porthoes [8], VENUS [28] and ICQ. Researchers have earned from system trias that in order for socia interaction to take off, peope need to decide what kind of interaction is appropriate to invove the target party. Therefore, knowing the physica avaiabiity of your coeagues is necessary but not sufficient. Peope aso need to know what Tomar, Sandor and Schemer [28] ca socia awareness, such as whether they are busy at the moment, or otherwise unwiing to accept an interaction request despite their presence on the system. In the case and ICQ, users indicate their physica avaiabiity and wiingness to 83

4 interact by seecting from a preset ist or inputting text, which aso provides information about future avaiabiity. Process awareness Process awareness is often found in workfow management systems (e.g. [20]), where the tasks are usuay wedefined and represented by a series of sub-tasks. Workfow systems generay assert more contro in information fow and the order in which tasks are competed [23]. In order to foow preset procedures, it is usefu to provide process awareness which gives peope a sense of where their pieces fit into the whoe picture, what the next step is, and what needs to be done to move the process aong. Perspective awareness Anticipation of others action is important in coordination of coaborative work[5, 131. In order to better predict others actions, peope not ony need information about others past actions, but aso information on how particuar actions emerged. More specificay, this impies giving group members information hepfu for making sense of others actions, such as background on team member beiefs and knowedge. This is why Boand et a. [5] suggested that sharing perspective is required for distributed decision makers. Environmenta awareness Environmenta awareness focuses on events occurring outside of the immediate workspace that may have impications for group activity. Fusse and coeagues[9], for exampe, describe a system that tracks important environmenta indicators that a business team might use to make decisions. Deivering awareness data Passive or active deivery These various forms of information can be provided to group members passivey or activey. In the passive situation, the coaborative system monitors particuar information and deivers it without requiring any specific actions on the part of group members. For exampe, the system might keep track of who upoads or downoads fies, and forwards this to a group members automaticay. A potentia probem for passive systems suggested by Fusse and coeagues [9] is that when arge numbers of actions occur, the group can be overwhemed with aerts and messages, resuting in cognitive overoad. They note that such passive deivery can be intrusive, causing distraction. In addition, when members receive such information out of context, they may fai to appreciate its meaning or significance, and may thus not take appropriate actions in response [7]. However for time-sensitive awareness information, passive deivery has the best chance to get a message across before the meaningfu context goes away. Active systems, on the other hand, require group members to take specific actions to request awareness data, and are therefore ess intrusive. However, this can resut in the underutiization of awareness data, as we as being an added burden on group members. Differentiated or undifferentiated Group members may each pay a different roe based upon their particuar expertise or aocated tasks. In scheduing meetings, it may be that one person is responsibe for organizing access to resources, such as a video conferencing faciity. If there is a confict due to another group s request for access to the same faciities, perhaps ony the organizers need to be made aware of this, rather than a potentia meeting participants. A coaborative system may be abe to direct particuar information to particuar peope based on these roes. It can aso further faciitate coordination by expicity noting the particuar person who needs to respond, avoiding situations where inaction occurs because members eave a response up to someone ese. Moreover, an undifferentiated deivery of awareness woud overoad a group members with potentiay irreevant information. Customized or fixed Customization concerns the degree of configurabiity the users have in determining the awareness information they receive. Choosing to receive awareness updates passivey or activey might be one basic type of customization. Additionay, group members may aso choose the types of awareness information and the frequency of awareness deivery. The Awareness Monitor [9] is an exampe of a highy configurabe awareness mechanism, which aows users to seect the pace and stye of in which awareness information is presented and to adjust the sensitivity of the monitoring function. Awareness Information as Foca versus Periphera A periphera approach woud awareness data without requiring a group member to take his or her attention away from other work. This woud be simiar to the way in which we use our periphera vision or hearing to keep abreast of others activities in a common physica environment [2]. A foca approach directs the group member s attention to the specific awareness data. For exampe, in research on air traffic contro by Hughes et a. [ 151, controers took stock of a awareness information by ooking at the spatia arrangement of a fight strip. Benford et a. [2] characterizes this means of providing awareness as the seeing at a gance approach. The idea is to benefit from a we-structured arrangement of inter-reated information to reduce the necessary cognitive efforts of users as they get updated. Within a singe appication or across appication Group members may receive awareness updates by accessing a singe appication, or the coaborative system may be capabe of providing updates to members in a number of separate appications. An exampe of the former 84

5 case is when users obtain their updates by going to a specific website or ogging into a specific appication [9]. In the atter case, an exampe woud be a system that not ony stores data for review in a particuar appication, but is aso abe to notify members of important updates via emai. Access anywhere or a particuar pace Accessibiity of awareness information is an important issue, especiay to gobay distributed teams. To maintain high accessibiity, the requirements of hardware and software to access awareness shoud be kept at a minimum. Because of its simpe cient-server architecture and ow infrastructure requirement, the Word Wide Web represents an increasingy attractive patform for deveoping coaborative toos for widey-dispersed groups [4]. True mobiity of access aso means avoiding appications that require members to be at a specific workstation, such as ICQ or AOL Instant Messenger. These require users to have specific software instaed that identifies them, which makes it difficut for someone to access awareness data from another person s workstation. Gathering awareness data Expicif versus embedded A coaborative too can gather awareness information expicity, such as asking the user to provide the information, or impicity, such as automaticay ogging users actions. One advantage of expicity gathering desired information is that it can be used to generate awareness of information that woud ordinariy be difficut to coect automaticay. Socia awareness [28] is one exampe, where users can seect their socia situation and type in any additiona comments. However, it is aso a much more obtrusive method that can cause distraction. Moreover, because users are required to suppy this information, the extra work may cause resistance and ead to an undersuppy of awareness data. On the other hand, the embedded gathering approach is reativey unobtrusive, and reduces user effort. However, it aso imits the possibe information to that which has been prespecified by system designers. A mixed approach that combines embedded system ogging with expicit but optiona provision of information may be a usefu compromise, and has been integrated into some systems (e.g. BSCW [3]). Responses to awareness data Median-Mora [20] points out that information is ony usefu because someone can do something with it. This impies that awareness shoud be inked to action. Matsuura et a. [19] expicity expressed this point by defining awareness as a mechanism not ony to provide information about other s activities, but aso to support interactions among them. An exampe can be found in Porthoes system [8], where users wi be prompted with a set of action buttons (emai, gance and isten) when they cick on an image that was used to make them aware of someone s presence. Summary This overview is by no means an exhaustive isting of potentia design options. It does iustrate, however, the richness of the awareness concept for understanding the potentia services that a coaborative system might offer to groups. DESIGN GOALS Based on this review, we attempted to design an integrated coaborative too which takes into account the varieties of awareness information. We aso wanted a too that worked in concert with the many other communication systems and appications that groups might use. Our genera goas can best be summarized by the foowing specific design parameters. provide a shared workspace where group members can store and retrieve shared objects 0 support asynchronous group interaction through the abiity to post group messages provide group members with ongoing information about : - the status of group objects (e.g. documents or images) and the activities reated to them (upoads, downoads, or modifications) - group communication (e.g. message posted to a message board) - resources avaiabe to the group (e.g. when a resource is schedued or not schedued) - schedues and avaiabiities support group use of other externa communication resources (e.g. through a scheduer, and by recognition of conficts) 0 work with reguary used communication toos outside the coaborative too have ubiquitous accessibiity via the Internet from a commodity web browser, without need to insta or upgrade software be easiy customized for different groups TeamSCOPE IMPLEMENTATION The above design goas were transated into the foowing features of TeamSCOPE. Shared fie space and fie management TeamSCOPE equips each team with a team shared fie repository, which makes it easy to users to store and exchange group reated fies. The most prominent user interface to access this fie space is web-based. An exampe of the TeamSCOPE web interface is shown in Figure 1, which iustrates the fie manager, reminiscent of the Mac Finder or Windows Exporer. Users can easiy perform the 85

6 usua fie management tasks via the Web, such as to upoad, downoad, rename, copy, deete, move and change access privieges of a fie or foder. A great dea of effort has been invested in making the web interface equay accessibe to a web browsers, from text-ony browsers up through the atest versions of Netscape and Internet Exporer. igure 1. Fie management in TeamSCOPE The web interface is ayered on an underying standard GNU/Linux system. Other interface ayers parae the web interface, such as ftp, tenet, ssh, and scp. A these are cross-patform network protocos, so most network computers aready support them, whether they are based on PC, Mac, Unix, or other patform. This means that most users need not insta additiona software to use TeamSCOPE. TeamSCOPE users are grouped into teams of users working together. Each team has a shared foder used to share fies among teammates. In addition, each user has a persona foder that can be used to store fies of more interest to the user than the team. (Persona foders correspond to and are impemented as Unix user home directories.) Version contro Teams often want to keep severa versions of documents, such as mutipe revisions of reports. For the genera case, where many fies in nested subfoders exist in a tree of branching versions, TeamSCOPE can be integrated into an existing version-contro system such as CVS. For simper cases, TeamSCOPE aows users to specify that oder versions of a fie be retained, rather than repace, at fie upoad time. Od versions are renamed with a numeric extension. Tracking awareness information The TeamSCOPE system records information on accesses to each team s shared foder and each user s persona directory in a database. This information is used to provide team members awareness of their teammates activities. Activities tracked by TeamSCOPE incude a fie-reated activities, pus a number of activities reated to message boards and caendar events (discussed ater in this paper). TeamSCOPE as currenty impemented tracks ony changes made through web and ftp interfaces; tracking changes made through other interfaces is under consideration. Awareness information is presented to the user in a number of ways, as described in the sections beow. Opening team page as foca point for a awareness data Each team can create a website describing their project. By defaut, TeamSCOPE creates a website for each team which dispays a summary of the contents of the TeamSCOPE system, incuding message board contents, upcoming caendar events, recent fie activities, and inks to usefu information about TeamSCOPE. When users og in to their Team site, they are fn-st presented with this summary page of awareness data (see Figure 2). Normay, viewing,of team websites is restricted to team members through ogin and password, but team members can change or remove this restriction. Teams can customize the appearance of this page for their own use, using a text editor or an HTML editor with support for server-parsed HTML. Teams can aso repace the team page with one of their own design. Figure 2. Opening team page Activity screen TeamSCOPE tracks which activities have been reported to each user. When a user ogs in, by defaut the initia page dispays the activities that have occurred most recenty. Users can seect to have ony events matching a set of criteria to be reported on the Activity screen. The criteria can be both content-sensitive, choosing the type of events interested, and object-sensitive, choosing the specific objects interested. For instance, users can request that ony activities regarding fies in a particuar foder be reported. When finished viewing the ist of new activities, users may cick on a reset ink to te the system not to show these activities again. 86

7 Daiy emais Some users may not og in to the web-based system often, but sti want to receive awareness information. For their benefit, TeamSCOPE provides the option to receive daiy emai summaries of activity. Days on which emais are sent are configurabe. Criteria for events to be reported by emai can be seected by users in the same way as the web interface, The web and emai awareness systems can be set up to interact, so that events aready reported by emai are not dispayed by defaut via the web interface. Search TeamSCOPE maintains an activity history. This history can be searched on the web interface. Mutipe search criteria are aowed, and resuts can be sorted by user, fie, activity and date. Faciitating group communication Per-fie message boards and an overa project forum Team members often want to exchange opinions on their fies or on the project as a whoe. Emai is one way to do this. As an additiona method, TeamSCOPE provides a threaded message board for each fie in a team s shared foder as we as an overa project message board. To hep users be aware of the communication on the message board, a reated activities are ogged, incuding posting, editing and deetion. Users wi see them appearing on the Activity screen as we. TeamSCOPE aso keeps track of who has requested each artice. This aows posters to get a rough idea of who is paying attention to their artices and if any other means of communication is needed. Synchronous interaction support Even though TeamSCOPE is mainy a too for asynchronous communication, it provides some support for synchronous communication. When mutipe users on the same team are ogged in at once, TeamSCOPE notifies them. It aso provides a simpe Java appet for rea-time text-based chat, accessibe by simpy cicking on the button on any TeamSCOPE page. Team emai ist In TeamSCOPE, each distributed team has an emai ist. Mai sent to the ist maiing address is automaticay re-sent to a the members of the team. With the hep of TeamSCOPE administrator, teams can aso create additiona emai ists with configurabe members to suit different communication needs. For exampe, a team s facuty advisor or corporate sponsor can be incuded for the discussion of certain issues. Schedue and resource management Caendar Scheduing team meetings and keeping track of deadines can be difficut, especiay when teams are distributed across mutipe time zones. TeamSCOPE s caendar features are intended to ease such difficuties by giving team members a cear ook at caendar events. A typica TeamSCOPE caendar is shown in Figure 3. Figure 3. Caendar Any team member can add an event to the caendar. The event is then visibe to a of the members of the team. Each event has a number of properties, the most important being its start date and time and end date and time and its tite. Events can aso have a more detaied description associated with them, which coud be used, for instance, to describe a meeting agenda. Events can aso have a team member designated as coordinator for that event. Events can be dispayed in a traditiona format or as a Gantt chart. In the traditiona format, the intervas and tites of events schedued for the seected range of dates are dispayed aongside a caendar for the month or months associated with those dates. When Gantt representation is seected, TeamSCOPE draws a Gantt-stye chart that graphicay represents the date or time interva associated with each event. Shared resource reservation Sometimes a number of teams must share imited resources. TeamSCOPE has caendar features to ease reservation of these shared resources. For each caendar event, one or more shared resources can be seected for use. This effectivey reserves those resources for use by the team within the event s duration. Confict resoution is aso supported. When a second team attempts to reserve a resource for a period that overaps another team s aready reserved period, TeamSCOPE reports the confict and aows the user to change the event time or resources. In case more carefu coordination is required, the teams are provided contact information for the coordinator of the conficting event. Security TeamSCOPE s web interface security is impemented through a ogin mode. At the beginning of a session, the user suppies his or her usemame and password, which are transmitted in ceartext to the TeamSCOPE server. The 87

8 server responds with a 120-bit session ID chosen using a cryptographicay secure random number generator. The session ID is then used for authentication for the remainder of the session, transmitted by the user s web cient to the server on each page oad. The session ID expires either upon an expicit og out action by the user, or after a user-defined ide timeout interva. Security coud be improved by using encrypted connections between the TeamSCOPE cient and server. This can easiy be impemented by using an SSL-aware web server, such as Apache-SSL. The TeamSCOPE distribution does not incude instructions for setting up encrypted connections because of U.S. reguations prohibiting export of software containing encryption code. Open Source Architecture A the software used in the construction of the TeamSCOPE system is Open Source. This aows the fu source code of software necessary for deveopment to be everaged, greaty speeding deveopment of some parts of the system. For instance, it was necessary to modify the ftp daemon to output ogs in the format needed by TeamSCOPE. Since the fu sources of the ftp daemon used (proftpd 1.0) were avaiabe, the deveopment of an entirey new ftp daemon was avoided. TeamSCOPE itsef, when reeased, wi be under the GNU Genera Pubic License, an Open Source-compiant icense. RELATED WORKS There has been an increasing number of research projects and commercia products aimed at faciitating coaborative works via the Web. Severa systems offer a fie repository to hep team members to share group objects. They incude BSCW (bscw.gmd.de), Teamspace ( WebEX ( eroom, ( Lotus s Instant!TEAMROOM ( and HotOffice ( These systems aso provide one or more coaborative utiities, such as a threaded message board, caendar, fie annotation, active user monitoring and rea-time chat. Systems for software deveopment, such as CVS and Visua SourceSafe, speciaize in tie ocking and version contro. TeamSCOPE does not depart far from these systems in terms of functionaity. The major difference resides on what awareness information is gathered and how it is presented. Not a systems track information on events in the shared workspace. If they do, the scope of awareness information is often imited, either focusing on fie- reated activities or caendar entry. Aso the awareness information is often scattered in the team workspace. Users have to ook into each fie or object to get an idea on what happened. Tear&COPE, on the other hand, provides a centra ocation as we as search capabiity for event history on fies, caendars, message boards and users usage. In fact, TeamSCOPE greets users with a the new activities once they og in. It is easy for TeamSCOPE users to keep their team in scope. However, TeamSCOPE is imited in terms of providing synchronous awareness. Athough appications such as ICQ offer such a capabiity, the stand-aone soution doesn t tie into the shared workspace and thus reduces its utiity in a teamwork context. Two recent research projects, Awareness Monitor [9] and Orbit project [17] are both hepfu in terms of providing rea-time awareness information on changes in the shared foder and other users action in a shared workspace. EARLY TeamSCOPE TRIALS The deveopment of TeamSCOPE started in In the beginning of the spring semester, 1999, we introduced TeamSCOPE to two internationa student design teams as we as the research administrative team for the INTEnD project [27]. Student teams were composed of five engineering students with two from the Netherands and three from the U.S. The research administrative team incudes researchers from six universities in three continents with a tota of 20 members. At the time of writing this paper, these teams had access to TeamSCOPE for about 15 weeks, with the student teams in the fina phases of their projects. In this eary tria, we found that the usage of TeamSCOPE differs sharpy between the research team and student teams. TeamSCOPE was heaviy used by the research administration team from the beginning and throughout this tria period. But the usage of TeamSCOPE has been very imited among the student teams. We found the foowing factors contributed to this difference. Group Size The arge group size of the research team made it difficut to keep track of a group activities and thus group members reied more on TeamSCOPE. Aso since it was more difficut to arrange synchronous meetings for a arge group, the message board in TeamSCOPE was an important outet for group discussion in the research team. On the other hand, the sma size of the student groups made it reativey easy to coordinate through emai or video conferencing. Shared fies in the eary stages of group activity The research team created a ot of shared fies from the very beginning, which contributed greaty to their eary adoption of the too. However, the number of shared documents was very imited in the eary stage of student teams. As a resut, they became accustomed to interacting without TeamSCOPE. Athough in the fina stage of the project, student teams did have more fies to exchange among themseves, their estabished patterns of coordination were hard to overcome. Athough they thought TeamSCOPE coud be a usefu too, they were reuctant to make any changes to their now famiiar 88

9 exchange patterns so cose to the end of their anticipated interaction. Group maturity and anticipated future interaction Another reated factor is the group maturity in terms of group deveopment. Most members of the research team had been working together for more than one year before TeamSCOPE was introduced and expected to continuousy coaborate with each other in the future. However, the student teams were zero-history groups and had no expectation that they woud work together after these projects. The combination of a higher interest in the coaborative toos, maturity, and expectation of continued group work made the research team more wiing to experiment with TeamSCOPE. Student teams, on the other hand, as a new group with no expectation of continued interaction, were more ikey to stick with anything that worked, rather than try anything new or better. The imited number of tota groups The imited number of tota groups reduced the possibe needs for inter-group coordination. As a resut, the utiity of some features of TeamSCOPE, such as resource confict notification, is not as high as it woud be. Cost of access Athough the Internet is the best candidate for ubiquitous accessibiity, it is not free in a paces, and suffers from congestion deays. In our tria situations, students in China not ony had to pay to access websites in foreign countries, but aso not every computer can connect to websites outside of China. It severey reduced their motivation to use the web-based TeamSCOPE. The congestion on the Internet, particuary for internationa connections, sowed response times for TeamSCOPE, discouraging students in other countries from reying on it. Importance of training and support Athough teams were shown briefy how to use the various features of TeamSCOPE, they were not provided with extensive training that iustrated the use of TeamSCOPE to sove coordination needs directy reevant to the group. There aso was no mechanism for in-person support when groups experienced difficuties using TeamSCOPE. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT So far, TeamSCOPE is sti under deveopment. We expect to add a number of new features, incuding a more user friendy interface. We wi aso continue testing TeamSCOPE on a arger number of virtua teams. The tria version provided us with an initia opportunity to assess utiity in supporting highy distributed virtua teams. Based on this beta test experience, severa of our assumptions regarding the requirements for coaboration systems appear warranted. Group members generay do work in coaborative systems rather than with singe appications. Peope, shared objects, communication media and software toos are a parts of the coaborative system. Designers of coaborative toos shoud consider the reationship between the specific toos and the whoe system. It is especiay important in designing toos for virtua teams because of the fragmented work environment they face. Moreover, awareness can be a usefu concept for groupware design in terms of inking different pieces of the coaborative system. The various types of awareness information provide channes for coaborative appications to reate to each other and integrate with other aspects of team work. Finay, severa factors appear to infuence group usage of the TeamSCOPE coaborative too. They incude the size of group, the form of shared object, the eve of group maturity and the rea accessibiity of the too. ACKNOWLEGEMENT The authors are gratefu to the Nationa Science Foundation for the grant (IIS- 1568) which funded this research. We woud aso ike to acknowedge the hepfu comments of the many coeagues in the INTEnD consortium, as we as Robert Kraut and J.J. Cadiz. REFERENCE 1. Abe, M. Experiences in an exporatory distributed organization. In Inteectua Teamwork: Socia and Technoogica Foundations of Cooperative Work, eds. J. Gaegher, R.E. Kraut, and C. Egido Lawrence Erbaum Associates, Hisdae, NJ, Benford, S., Bowers, J., Fahen, L.T., Mariani, J., and Rodden, T. Supporting cooperative work in virtua environments. The Computer Journa 37, 8, 1994, Bentey, R., Appet, W., Busbash, U., Hinrichs, E., Kerr, D., Sikke, K., Trevor, J., and Woetze, G. Basic support for cooperative work on the Word Wide Web. Internationa Journa of Human-Computer Studies 46, 1997, Bentey, R., Horstmann, T., and Trevor, J. The Word Wide Web as enabing technoogy for CSCW: The case of BSCW. In Groupware and the Word Wide Web, eds. R. Bentey, et a. Kuwer Academic Pubishers, Dordrecht, the Netherands, Boand, R.J., Schwartz, D.G., and Tenkasi, R.V. Sharing perspectives in distributed decision making, in Proceedings of CSCW 92 (Toronto Canada, November 1992), ACM Press, Coo, C., Fish, R.S., Kraut, R.E., and Lowery, C.M. Iterative design of video communication systems, in Proceedings of CSCW 92 (Toronto Canada, November 1992), ACM Press, Dourish, P. and Beotti, V. Awareness and coordination in shared workspace, in Proceedings 89

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