TheEvolve project: Component-based tailorability for CSCW applications

Tailorability is generally regarded as a key property of groupware systems owing to the dynamics and differentiation of cooperative work. This article investigates the use of software components as a generic architectural concept for designing tailorable groupware applications. First, the issues raised by this approach are discussed in the context of an exploratory experiment during which component-based tailorability was applied to a real tailoring problem in thePoliTeam project. The experiment's results led us to concentrate on questions concerning the support of distributed CSCW applications. As a consequence, we have developed theEvolve platform, whose design concepts are described. Furthermore, a concrete example for the application of the approach to the design of a tailorable distributed coordination tool is given. We discuss related work, summarise the current state of the component-based tailorability approach and propose venues of further research.