Organizing Mobile Work Processes in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Abstract

This thesis explores the domain of ubiquitous computing and relates situations of mobile work to Virtual Organizations (VOs). Motivated by the work performed by the MOWAHS project, this thesis aims to contribute in understanding virtual organizations, and in continuously assessing and improving the work processes within these. Emerging technologies enable improved sensing of users, actions, wishes and requirements which can be utilized for facilitating situated activities in dynamic organizations. Taking an organizational approach to the subject we aim to describe new ways of coordinating actors automatically in these environments based on context information from the surroundings. Through analysis of simple mobile work scenarios, we can extract knowledge of how different situations of mobile work demand coordination. This is used as method for identifying the importance of work process information in monitoring coordination. We provide an architecture proposition for a coordination module and suggestions to how context information of the work processes could be acquired and represented as knowledge to the organization.