Coordination of Collaborative Activities: A Framework for the Definition of Tasks Interdependencies

The Coordination of interdependencies between tasks in collaborative environments is a very important and difJicult endeavor. The separation between tasks and interdependencies allows f o r the use of different coordination policies in the same collaborative environment by changing only the coordination mechanisms that control the interdependencies. This paper presents a framework for the definition of interdependencies that frequently occur in collaborative activities. By means of a clear characterization of interdependencies, it is possible to identib coordination mechanisms to manage them, opening the way toward a power@ coordination tool capable of encompassing a wide range of collaborative applications. An implementation of the coordination model of a collaborative virtual environment based on the proposed framework is given as example.