=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-34/paper-9
|storemode=property
|title=Situated Knowledge Management - KM on the Borderline between Chaos and Rigidity
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-34/diefenbruch_et_al.pdf
|volume=Vol-34
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/pakm/DiefenbruchHMS00
}}
==Situated Knowledge Management - KM on the Borderline between Chaos and Rigidity==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-34/diefenbruch_et_al.pdf
Situated Knowledge Management –
KM on the borderline between chaos and rigidity
Marc Diefenbruch Marcel Hoffmann, Andrea Misch,
ExperTeam AG, Dortmund, Helge Schneider
Germany Informatics and Society,
mdb@experteam.de University of Dortmund, Germany
{hoffmann, misch, schneide}
@iug.cs.uni-dortmund.de
edge as parts of knowledge processes “that exhibit a spe-
Abstract cific ordering of work activities across time and place,
with a beginning and end and clearly identified inputs and
Acknowledging the “untidiness of knowledge outputs”. In this respect, knowledge processes are similar
work”, we agree that organizational learning calls to business processes which produce a value to an internal
for flexible and adaptable IT support. However, or external customer and support the organization’s busi-
recurring situations which generate experience or ness goals. Sometimes knowledge processes run in paral-
information needs require appropriate functional- lel and sometimes orthogonally to business processes, e.g.
ity. In this paper we suggest an approach to de- when they “transfer” experience from one case to later
signing KM applications that complies with situ- cases (fig. 1).
ated learning and situated information needs
without restraining creativity and flexibility of Business processes
knowledge processes. Knowledge
processes
1 Introduction
Knowledge Management (KM) depends on reflective and
creative employees who take the initiative to engage in Knowledge base
organisational learning spontaneously. Therefore, auton- Fig. 1: business and knowledge processes
omy has always been considered as one of the most im-
portant conditions for KM. However, “grass root ap- Analysing business processes for knowledge activities,
proaches” to KM can create “evolving use” [Orl96] and one can identify activities or tasks where knowledge proc-
unanticipated successes, but also dysfunctional knowledge esses and business processes meet with increased prob-
development, transfer, and reuse processes, disappoint- ability. This is either because the activity opens the oppor-
ment and a decreasing acceptance and participation at the tunity to gather new insights, since it creates extraordinary
same time. Dysfunctional behaviour is often ascribed to a information needs, or because it allows the reuse of previ-
lack of commitment and reliability in organisational learn- ously gathered knowledge. [AGL99] call these activities
ing. Starting from these observations, we develop a KM the information leverage points of business processes.
approach that aims at a reconciliation of the strong point Knowing the preconditions or the subsequent actions that
in chaos and rigidity. Developing adaptable frameworks result from information leveraging actions, the actual in-
of KM processes, the approach provides situated perspec- formation requirements and the outcomes of knowledge
tives on an organisational knowledge base that support activities still depend on the user’s interpretation of the
both making gathered knowledge explicit and the re- situation and remain contingent. Yet, we cannot say more
trieval, re-contextualization and reuse of knowledge. about the object the user may direct his inquiry to, about
other activities that may benefit from the user’s reflection,
[DJB96] described knowledge activities like generat- about resources that may convey relevant information, or
ing/producing, distributing/providing and reusing knowl- about other users who may have experienced similar situa-
tions before, unless we have pictured the user’s situation
The copyright of this paper belongs to the paper’s authors. Permission to copy in advance.
without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not
made or distributed for direct commercial advantage. In this paper we describe our approach to designing KM
Proc. of the Third Int. Conf. on Practical Aspects of applications that comply with situated learning and situ-
Knowledge Management (PAKM2000) ated information needs, without restraining creativity and
Basel, Switzerland, 30-31 Oct. 2000, (U. Reimer, ed.) flexibility of organisational learning. In section 2 we de-
http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-34/ scribe our view of different software systems and make a
rough differentiation between software systems that may
Diefenbruch, Hoffmann, Misch, Schneider 8-1
imply more chaotic or more rigid KM applications. Sec-
tion 3 suggests a solution to reconcile the strong points of Case study:
both extremes, leading to the explanation and the evalua- Knowledge Management in a training company.
tion of the benefits of our approach. Finally, the paper The aim of a joint project with a training company
provides an illustration of our first steps towards realizing which we carried out during 1998/99 was to develop
our approach in KM modules. knowledge management by reengineering organiza-
tional processes, to educate the trainers in knowledge
The approach described here was developed through a sharing, and to introduce an embedded KM-Software.
cooperation between the University of Dortmund, Infor- When our team entered the company we found more
matics and Society, and ExperTeam AG, Dortmund in the than 50,000 training documents. Trainers were con-
research project (www.expect-project.de). stantly producing new training material and gathering
The project develops organisational strategies and instru- valuable experience which did not find its way into
ments for the introduction and the continuous improve-
the company’s archives. In order to improve the qual-
ment of KM and KM-modules which enhance the func-
ity and the development of new training services, the
tionality of KM products to overcome barriers. We illus-
trate our approach with a case study which we carried out training company wanted to increase the knowledge
in a training company, designing a system for trainers to exchange. Documents were stored and retrieved ac-
share training materials [Ho*99]. cording to numbering-systems. Accordingly, one of
the goals of the project was to establish search func-
tionality that allowed trainers to search for training
2 IT support for chaos and rigidity elements for a specific purpose and to find related
training elements in the electronic archive. Other
Explaining the objectives of KM, many authors refer to goals of the project were the reduction of brain-drain,
knowledge processes, like for instance Nonaka and Ta- when trainers leave the company, and the support of
keuchi’s [NoT95] well-known pattern of externalisation, new trainers in developing training expertise.
combination, internalisation, and socialization or the The company offers behaviour training in sales and
building blocks of KM according to [PRR99]. From this
management business and is one of the leading or-
perspective KM can be defined as the continuous devel-
opment, provision and employment of methods and tools ganizations in this field in Germany. 20 trainers carry
to support these organizational knowledge processes. Re- out more than 3000 training days each year. They are
lying on these definitions, many organisational efforts can supported by an administrative team of about 20 em-
be considered as KM efforts, projects, methods or tools. ployees, including customer service, trainer assis-
Dedicated KM instruments, methods, products or applica- tance, seminar conceptionists etc. The central process
tions remain obscure. is the delivery of training services which includes
several activities like negotiations with the customers,
KM projects employ many different IT tools, each sup- preparation of a training offer, preparation of training
porting certain processes and applications. Sometimes IT materials, development of new materials, carrying out
is the driving force behind the development of knowledge the training, and debriefing after trainings [He*2000]
processes; sometimes it is one of many methods or en-
ablers. Sometimes KM employs already existing technol- system use. They decide for which tasks they employ the
ogy in the organisation and sometimes it introduces addi- system, which results they provide for common access,
tional software. Recent market-studies of commercial KM with whom they cooperate, which information they read,
products list software coming from different functional and so on. Therefore chaotic KM solutions support volun-
backgrounds.The building blocks of most of the current tary knowledge work in particular.
products are Document Management Systems (DMS),
Content Management-Systems (CMS) Workflow- GW mechanisms are employed to a great range of situa-
Management-Systems (WfMS), Groupware (GW), Search tions of communication, coordination and cooperation.
& Retrieval technology (S&RT) and Enterprise Resource Like DMS they tend to imply symmetrical usage and re-
Planning (ERP) [FGS99]. tain different and unanticipated contents. Both systems
provide support in chaotic situations.
“Chaotic” KM solutions are characterized by symmetri-
cal relations between autonomous protagonists and flexi- “Rigid” KM solutions are characterized by detailed
ble access rights to contents and functionality. The defini- specifications of user’s duties and rights and by the antici-
tion of roles (if any) reflects the user’s interest and not pation of an orderly execution of pre-specified activities
their position in the hierarchy. Communications, coopera- with the system. Distribution of labour is enforced through
tion and coordination are user-initiated and the results of the distribution of access rights to contents and functional-
these activities are contingent. Composition and order of ity. The system monitors the control-flow. Therefore, it is
activities in cooperative work processes are configured capable of distributing work-items, triggering necessary
spontaneously and can be specified and adapted by the activities, and notifying deadlines. Furthermore, the an-
users. As a consequence, the users themselves regulate ticipation of certain usage situations allows for extended
Diefenbruch, Hoffmann, Misch, Schneider 8-2
support of work activities, automatic selection of relevant and creating KM-systems that are both creative and value
knowledge resources or the recommendation of appropri- adding.
ate activities respectively. Rigid KM enhances the reliabil-
ity of KM processes and guarantees certain results. The
performance of the KM system can be evaluated against 3.1 Requirements
certain expectations.
KM solutions have to reconcile emergent KM with the
execution of predetermined knowledge processes, sym-
WfMS produce best results when applied to frequently
metrical relations between users with special functionality
executed processes which have little variance and which
to support certain services, and mandatory business proc-
can be described a priori with a certain degree of correct-
ess tasks with voluntary participation in organizational
ness and completeness. Like WfMS CMS imply certain
learning. Evaluating available systems in the context of a
roles of users, a small number of authors and editors and a
KM project in a training company, we observed deficits
larger number of readers respectively. Both systems are
and requirements for improvement in three aspects.
more prevalent in “rigid” applications.
3.1.1 Information overload / deviations and gaps in
We expect future KM products to combine functionality
classifying and routing information
from different origins even more seamlessly. However, the
products will keep their focus. No product will provide Since chaotic KM applications provide few mechanisms
optimal conditions in all functional requirements. If the for convergence, they tend to manage poorly structured
products’ heritage stays visible, products will keep imply- and classified volumes of data that a single user cannot
ing certain applications while impeding others. To judge filter for his/her information needs. As a consequence,
whether an application of a software tends to either the valuable information is not reused. On the other hand,
first or the second extreme in that continuum, we look at fixed information structures and information distribution
certain indicators. For instance, processes fail to record innovations and to adapt to rapidly
changing information needs. Full-text retrieval mecha-
• whether the application creates new patterns of inter- nisms provide indispensable benefits, but sometimes
action, or whether it supports the orderly execution of change agents push information at the wrong time and
anticipated processes (flexibility of control flow), search engines deliver too much irrelevant information.
Additional metadata, like for instance a document’s his-
• whether the application is employed to manage various
tory or references to related resources, can bear extra
unanticipated contents, or whether it manages prede-
benefits. Therefore, most systems manage information on
fined contents (flexibility of contents),
a document’s age, origin, and so on.
• whether the application is used symmetrically or
asymmetrically among the users (distribution of labour In the training company we found that information needs
and access rights), or vary according to the problems users were working on.
Preparing trainings for automobile sales agents, for in-
• whether the users employ the application for voluntary
stance, trainers reviewed materials from previous training
tasks, or whether the application enforces specified
sessions in the automobile industry, previous sales train-
constraints of mandatory tasks (monitoring and control
ing sessions and previous training with the actual cus-
of task execution).
tomer. Some trainers maintained several versions of the
Some of the distinctions we made to classify commercial same training element for different situations. Conven-
KM products hold for some research prototypes, too. tional DMS, GW-systems and current knowledge portals
However, many prototypes transgress our boundaries (cf. do not reflect such transitions of the user’s information
section 3.2). needs and his/her situation.
Requirements are:
3 Finding the path
• Additional, helpful metadata for filtering documents
Purely self-regulated approaches call for continuous social
negotiations of conventions and rules that provide organ- • Information suitable for user’s information needs and
isational guidance to using the system, otherwise they run current situation
the risk of slipping into chaos. On the other hand, closely
specified systems will lose acceptance and become rigid, 3.1.2 Lack of reliability, commitment, and prospect
if the organisation fails to provide a participatory process awareness in knowledge processes
for continuous improvement and fulfil changed user re-
In most organisations the execution of organizational
quirements immediately. Of course, “chaos” and “rigidity”
learning processes differs from the business process exe-
are both negative terms to designate modes of KM appli-
cution. In business processes the division of labour, the
cations. However, both extremes show considerable bene-
rules for sequencing the activities, the requirements on the
fits and advantages. Therefore, the central challenge in
activities’ results, and the deadlines are constrained more
designing KM solutions is in reconciling chaos and rigid-
explicitly than in knowledge processes. However, it is a
ity, self-regulation and reliability, emergence and control
Diefenbruch, Hoffmann, Misch, Schneider 8-3
mistake to believe that organisational learning processes 3.2 Situated KM – Integrated Approach
require less commitment, reliability, or control. Engaging
To reconcile chaos and rigidity we suggest combining
in knowledge processes, workers build expectations on the
personalization with a business process oriented organiza-
consequences of their activity and need feedback just as in
tion of the knowledge base in a concept we call situated
business processes.
KM. Depending on the domain, personalization provides
personal bookmarks, bookshelves, saved queries, interest
In the training company, trainers agreed that recording
profiles, community membership and so on. The general
experiences after training sessions was an important
idea is to record data about a user’s preferences to provide
means of improving the reuse of training materials. How-
individually customized services or functionality. Busi-
ever, when we found out that experiences were recorded
ness process oriented organization of KM captures,
sporadically only, the trainers explained that they felt
stores and presents contents regarding their relation to
more obliged to work for their customers than for other
business categories, for instance business objects (cus-
trainers. Furthermore, trainers complained that they did
tomers, products, services, documents, ...), business proc-
not know whether another trainer was going to reuse a
esses and subordinate workflows, and roles. [GoH2000]
training element. Accordingly, they were not aware of the
list several business related aspects which can be mod-
benefits of providing extra information. Suggestions to set
elled as contents metadata. Situated KM is the contextu-
up obligations to fill in review forms after training ses-
alization of knowledge processes. A situation is the con-
sions or to discuss training elements in an electronic dis-
text of a user at a specific time. In business situations, it
cussion space were rejected, although it was agreed that
consists of the user, the tasks the user has to perform, and
the lack of commitment and reliability in the knowledge
the information explicitly available in documents and sys-
processes was a major deficit.
tems, and the environment the person is working in.
Requirements are:
Business process oriented KM reduces the information
• Reliability and control of organisational learning proc- offered to the subset which is relevant for a user working
esses without strict control mechanisms on a certain task. Personalization reduces the amount of
information to a subset that is in some way relevant to
• Supporting awareness of prospects of participation in users and adds user specific contents. Combining both
knowledge processes approaches, situated KM provides information that is
relevant for this user in a given context not unconditional
3.1.3 Fractures and friction between personal and for the user in general. Thus, situated knowledge man-
social KM agement enables the user to take quick and effective ac-
Current KM solutions are not sensitive to a user’s situated tion as part of a certain business case. To make situated
information needs and most of his personal characteristics. KM work, we employ different mechanisms, so-called
Since users are commonly modelled in terms of access “perspectives”, metadata based categorization of contents
rights only, the IT-support does not match the individual according to a business process related framework, and
interests, preferences and social relations. preference based filtering and completion.
In the training company individual preference did not only To organize the contents, we adopt the perspectives model
influence the work process but also determined the inter- developed by [StH99]. Perspectives are a means to dis-
pretation of training knowledge. Even though there was a tribute contents in hierarchically organized workspaces,
central archive of training documents, all the trainers kept each workspace determining a certain perspective. Subor-
a personal archive. The personal archives included per- dinate perspectives inherit contents from higher perspec-
sonal versions of common documents, links between tives. With these mechanisms, information that is recog-
documents and were structured according to individual nized to be of more general relevance can be propagated
needs. When trainers used shared material, they created into subordinate perspectives where it is completed by
their personal versions of training elements. Moreover we more specialized information. Stahl and Herrmann applied
observed that trainers who were working in the same the perspectives mechanisms to support teams in gathering
business area built communities to share experiences. information on one subject from multiple viewpoints and
to control multidisciplinary and multithreaded discussions.
Requirements are: They define three fundamental types of perspectives.
Team perspectives contain contents relevant to all mem-
• Configurable interests, preferences, and social rela- bers of a team, e.g. users who share a certain information
tions needs. Individual perspectives (IPs) inherit the contents of
• Intertwining personal and shared workspaces team perspectives and contain personal contributions and
contents of other perspectives which the user linked into
• Community membership must add extra value to the her/his IP. Finally, the comparison perspectives summa-
personal environment rizes contents from different perspectives. Descending the
hierarchy, the volume of information grows due to the
inheritance mechanisms. To separate specific information
Diefenbruch, Hoffmann, Misch, Schneider 8-4
needs, perspectives can be divided or additional perspec- tents which is related to certain business tasks.
tives can be introduced.
To link contents to perspectives, information in the
The perspectives model provides generative mechanisms knowledge base has to be categorized. Documents or in-
which can be used to support situated KM. Instead of per- formation in general have properties, which put them in
sonal and team perspectives, we suggest to create perspec- relation to business objects, workflows, roles, persons or
tives for meaningful units or concepts of the business, like business tasks. In addition, there are a lot of properties for
processes, activities, objects, documents, or roles which each document, which originate from the document’s use
define business tasks. Any perspectives can be utilized by history, including the author of the document, the access
a user or a group of users to collect and communicate in- list (access times, permission, etc.) and the version his-
formation related to a certain aspects of the organization’s tory. Moreover, documents may be related to each other,
business. Perspectives that inherits contents from two or e.g. through a part-of-relation or different semantic rela-
more higher perspectives are similar to the comparison tions. A task creates a selection of information in the or-
perspectives. They provide functions to show the union ganisation knowledge base with regard to a certain busi-
set of the inherited contents and to filter or highlight the ness situation.
intersection set between perspectives. To separate special
information needs (e.g. information relevant in tasks that Suggesting shared business related perspectives our ap-
are concerned with certain customers) and to provide proach establishes places for building communities of
more general information in different situations, contents practice. However, these “team perspectives” do not pro-
can be linked to abstract business objects, abstract work- vide for personalization. Therefore we suggest to integrate
flows or business processes, or abstract roles (for an ex- personalization by so-called preference profiles that can
ample cf. section 3.3). Figure 2 shows how contents can be applied to all perspectives. Figure 2 shows how pro-
be distributed among perspectives that derive from busi- files personalize a business task oriented information por-
ness process related categories. The hierarchy on the left tal (BTP) to create a situated portal (SP). The situated
side of the figure contains perspectives for business ob- portal provides mechanisms for selecting different subsets
jects, business processes and subordinate workflows, and of the contents, filtering and ordering according to prefer-
roles. Alternatively, perspectives can collect data related ences gathered from the users preference profile for con-
to other aspects of the business, too (e.g. tools, meetings tributing information to the BTP or to other perspectives
and groups). The business task portals (BTPs) collect con- and for navigation between different SPs, BTPS, or per-
Situated KM
Business Process oriented KM Personalized KM
Information related to
abstract Buisness Objects ,
Processes , Workflows or Roles
... ABO i BPj ... BPk ARl ...
Inheritance
Pref. Profile Community ,
Business Object , Workflow
or Role related Information ... BO2 Wf1 Wf2 R1 Community m Pref , Favourites ,
...
Inheritance
Inheritance
Pref.Profile Personal Pref ,
Business Task
BTP2 User1 Favorits, ...
Information Portal
Inheritance and Preference
based Filtering and Ordering
SP
Situated
Information Portal
Selecting ∩ ∪ \
Filtering and ordering
Adding Information
Fig. 2: Distribution and Propagation of the contents of the organizational knowledge base among perspectives and
information portals
Diefenbruch, Hoffmann, Misch, Schneider 8-5
spectives. A preference profile contains any information it integrates “process-centered” and “product-centered”
about a user that can be applied to filter contents or to add views on KM [Be*99].
complementing contents to a certain perspective according
to the user’s skills, interests, or experience. Accordingly 3.2 Applications and Benefits
the preference profile can include
Implementing situated KM for the process of delivery of
training services [Ho*99] perspectives for subordinated
• Interests, specified in terms of keywords, predefined workflows (Wf) like the preparation of training folders or
interest categories, the user’s change agents, or natu- the debriefing after training will inherit all information
ral language expressions stored in the more abstract perspective. In a given situa-
• Usage data, e.g. saved queries tion like “preparing a training folder for sale agents of the
• Skill profile automobile customer A”, the user would select a business
• Personal favourites task information portal (BTP) which inherits contents
• Positive or negative preferences of contributions, from
specified in terms of keywords, or in terms of meta-
data a) the business object perspective of customer A (as
• Access rights subordinated perspective of the abstract business ob-
ject automobile customers),
• Community membership
• … b) the workflow perspective preparing a training folder,
and
Comparing different sources for personalization is a com- c) role perspective preparing trainer (as subordinated
plex task. Any kind of preference information must be perspective of the abstract role trainer).
matched with the hierarchy of business related perspec-
tives. This can be accomplished by specifying preferences Navigation: The selection of the portal requires aware-
with reference to perspectives, e.g. describing interest in ness of the overall structure of perspectives.Since the hi-
terms of a controlled vocabulary that reflects the perspec- erarchy is composed of elements like customers, docu-
tives hierarchy) or by assigning preference information to ments, or activities which are part of the user’s everyday
certain perspectives (e.g. linking personal favourites to experience, we expect that users will find it easier to navi-
BTPs they match with). However, in practice more ad- gate in this structure than in an abstract concept space.
vanced mechanisms that provide conceptual comparisons However, user will not acquire the ownership of the
of preference information with the perspectives’ contents knowledge structure unless they can influence the struc-
may be required. Inheriting preferences from community ture itself. Evolutionary Knowledge Management:
preference profiles provides a basis to build communities Since the situated KM approach imposes little constraints
of interest. Furthermore, community preference profiles for the creation of new information portals, users can be
support novice users who can inherit initial configuration allowed to create information portals on all levels.
from community profiles.
When users describe their information need by selecting a
Visiting this business task information portal the user de- predefined information portal the user’s task situation
scribes his/her information need to the system. In combi- becomes traceable to a certain extent. Recognizing a
nation with the profile of the user this selection creates a user’s situation can be a great advantage to enhancing
situational portal. The offered information depends on the control, commitment and reliability in knowledge proc-
profile of the user. On the other hand, the information that esses. Automated categorization: The information about
is offered for a second task (e.g. briefing after training) the user’s situation can be used to generate metadata
varies from the first situation because the business task automatically, e.g. user when a user accesses a certain
information portal changes. document or adds a comment into a customer profile the
document or the customer profile can be linked to the
The perspectives hierarchy is not filled by automated situation and can be presented in the BTP. In this way the
analysis of contents or automated comparisons to any explication and categorization of knowledge is facilitated.
given structure of concepts or ontology. Contents are as- Moreover, knowing about the users situation can be used
signed to perspectives on account of user decisions or on to control distributed knowledge processes more effec-
account of monitoring user behaviours. As a consequence, tively. Pushing information in the right moment: Gen-
the rationale behind the hierarchy does not necessarily erally acknowledged CSCW systems for KM need to
reflect one ordering-strategy and does not guarantee se- combine pull and push mechanisms. However, pushed
mantic consistence, it may even be contradictory in some request meet the user at the wrong time. Linking knowl-
parts. In contrast to concept based approaches (e.g. edge workflows to visitors of situated information portals
[VNJ99]) the perspectives reflect the user’s view on the one can expect that questions or request to contribute in-
relevance of different business objects, processes and formation meet the user in the right moment.
roles in specific business situations. The hierarchy pro-
vides an environment for process centered collection, link-
ing, and development of knowledge resources. In this way
Diefenbruch, Hoffmann, Misch, Schneider 8-6
Supporting Reuse: The KM activities could be user or friendly implementation of the mechanisms. Currently we
system driven. An example of a system driven design is a are selecting an appropriate business area in a consulting
dialogue which asks the user while storing a document if company for introducing the prototype and configuring
the document is relevant for a more abstract perspective. the perspectives hierarchy to specific business process
If the user identifies the document as relevant e.g. for all related information leverage points.
tasks related to an automobile customer the system will
store the document in a more abstract perspective. All References
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plication, the system’s HTTP-interface provides relevant lag. Gabler.
resources for several activities in scholarly publishing. [StH99] Stahl, G.; Herrmann, Th. (1999): Intertwining
ActivePerspective applies the perspective and negotiation Perspectives and Negotiation. Proceedings of Group
mechanisms to support collaboration in a multi user data- 99 (Phoenix, Arizona, October 1999), pp. 316-325.
bases of bibliographical references. The prototype was [VNJ99] Voss, A.; Nakata, K.; Juhnke, M. (1999) Con-
tested in an experimental negotiation of the classification cept Indexing. Proceedings of Group 99 (Phoenix, Ari-
of 12 documents according to a keyword list witch in- zona, October 1999), pp. 1-10.
cluded about 200 CSCW and HCI related keywords re-
cently. In order to evaluate situated KM we plan to build a
prototype of dynamic situated information portals based
on the commercial KM software Livelink. Combining
personal portals, project portals and workflow mecha-
nisms, Livelink provides good conditions for a user-
Diefenbruch, Hoffmann, Misch, Schneider 8-7