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NET-BASED TASK MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, Jennifer Wisdom
ABSTRACT
In net-based collaborative design environment, design resources become more and more varied and complex. Besides common information management systems, design resources can be organized in connection with design activities.
A set of activities and resources linked by logic relations can form a task. A task has at least one objective and can be broken down into smaller ones. So a design project can be separated into many subtasks forming a hierarchical structure.
Task Management System (TMS) is designed to break down these tasks and assign certain resources to its task nodes．As a result of decomposition.al1 design resources and activities could be managed via this system.
KEY WORDS：Collaborative Design, Task Management System (TMS), Task Decomposition, Information Management System
1 Introduction
Along with the rapid upgrade of request for advanced design methods, more and more design tool appeared to support new design methods and forms. Design in a web environment with multi-partners being involved requires a more powerful and efficient management system .Design partners can be located everywhere over the net with their own organizations. They could be mutually independent experts or teams of tens of employees. This article discusses a task management system (TMS) which manages design activities and resources by breaking down design objectives and re-organizing design resources in connection with the activities. Comparing with common
information management systems (IMS) like product data management system and document management system, TMS can manage the whole design process. It has two tiers which make it much more f1exible in structure.
The 1ower tier consists of traditional common IMSS and the upper one fulfills logic activity management through controlling a tree-like structure, allocating design resources and making decisions about how to carry out a design project. Its functioning paradigm varies in different projects depending on the project’s scale and purpose. As a result of this structure, TMS can separate its data model from its logic mode1.It could bring about structure optimization and efficiency improvement, especially in a large scale project.
2 Task Management in Net-Based Collaborative Design Environment
2.1 Evolution of the Design Environment
During a net-based collaborative design process, designers transform their working environment from a single PC desktop to LAN, and even extend to WAN. Each design partner can be a single expert or a combination of many teams of several subjects, even if they are far away from each other geographically. In the net-based collaborative design environment, people from every terminal of the net can exchange their information interactively with each other and send data to authorized roles via their design tools. The Co Design Space is such an environment which provides a set of these tools to help design partners communicate and obtain design information. Code sign Space aims at improving the efficiency of collaborative work, making enterprises increase its sensitivity to markets and optimize the configuration of resource.
2.2 Management of Resources and Activities in Net-Based Collaborative Environment
The expansion of design environment also caused a new problem of how to organize the resources and design activities in that environment. As the number of design partners increases, resources also increase in direct proportion. But relations between resources increase in square ratio. To organize these resources and their
relations needs an integrated management system which can recognize them and provide to designers in case of they are needed.
One solution is to use special information management system (IMS).An IMS can provide database, file systems and in/out interfaces to manage a given resource. For example there are several IMS tools in Co Design Space such as Product Data Management System, Document Management System and so on. These systems can provide its special information which design users want.
But the structure of design activities is much more complicated than these IM S could manage, because even a simple design project may involve different design resources such as documents, drafts and equipments. Not only product data or documents, design activities also need the support of organizations in design processes. This article puts forward a new design system which attempts to integrate different resources into the related design activities. That is task management system (TMS).
3 Task Breakdown Model
3.1 Basis of Task Breakdown
When people set out to accomplish a project, they usually separate it into a sequence of tasks and finish them one by one. Each design project can be regarded as an aggregate of activities, roles and data. Here we define a task as a set of activities and resources and also having at least one objective. Because large tasks can be separated into small ones, if we separate a project target into several lower—level objectives, we define that the project is broken down into subtasks and each objective maps to a subtask. Obviously if each subtask is accomplished, the project is surely finished. So TMS integrates design activities and resources through planning these tasks.
Net-based collaborative design mostly aims at products development. Project managers (PM) assign subtasks to designers or design teams who may locate in other cities. The designers and teams execute their own tasks under the constraints which are defined by the PM and negotiated with each other via the collaborative design environment. So the designers and teams are independent collaborative partners and have incompact coupling relationships. They are driven together only by theft design tasks. After the PM have finished decomposing the project, each designer or team leader who has been assigned with a subtask become a 1ow-class PM of his own task.