Task modelling for cooperative work

Modern work systems are characterized by a high amount of cooperation among working persons. Thus, task modelling for cooperative work is of great sig nificance for an appropriate design of work systems. Due to the special cha racteristics of cooperative work, several requirements for the modelling te chnique have to be met. In this paper, first the requirements for a task mo delling technique are derived and compared with existing approaches. Then, as no existing technique completely fulfils the important requirement for a bstraction in order to model weakly structured activities, a new technique is presented, which is on the one hand essentially based on an existing mod elling language for deterministic software intensive systems and on the oth er hand has been enlarged by additional concepts for being able to model ta sks carried out cooperativey by human beings. The results of a case study i n which the new technique has been applied are presented and discussed. Fin ally, an outlook towards future research concerning task modelling for coop erative work is given.