Knowledge workers are increasingly engaged in various projects at the same time, requiring flexible collaboration – new team forms emerge that feature dynamic interaction patterns currently unsupported by existing software services.

inContext strived to enable dynamic collaboration by exploring new techniques and algorithms for pro-active service aggregation, context-aware service adaptation and service provisioning, exploring novel techniques and algorithms for mining human activities and providing context-relevant services, at the right time and granularity, to human interaction partners in those various team forms.

The main objective of the project was the development of an innovative platform of services to support of virtual teamworks, based on dynamic workflow management, context adaptation and learning capabilities.

Emerging new ways of flexible and mobile teamwork require new technical as well as organizational support, which current technologies and infrastructures do not cater sufficiently.

Recent developments show a strong move towards increasingly mobile nimble and virtual project teams.

Whereas traditional organizational structures relied on teams of collaborators dedicated to a specific project for a long period, many organizations increasingly rely on nimble teams, formed from members of possibly different branches or companies, assigned to perform short-lived tasks in an ad-hoc manner (sometimes called ad hoc teams).

Such nimble collaboration styles change many of the traditional assumptions about teamwork: collaborators do not report to the same manager, they do not reside in the same location, and they do not work during the same time.

This new way of collaboration and interaction amongst activities (services) and people ultimately leads to challenging and new requirements for the collaboration tools.

A consolidated research group with a renowned academic and industrial profile.

• Vienna University of Technology (AT)
• algoWatt SpA (IT)
• National University of Ireland, Galway (IR)
• European Microsoft Innovation Centre GmbH – EMIC (DE)
• Electrolux Home Products Italy SpA – ELX (IT)
• Hewlett Packard Italiana (IT)
• University of Leicester (GB)
• West Midlands LGA (GB)
• COMVERSE Ltd. (IS)