1、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.
2、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 nodesAs a result of design
3、resources and activities could be managed via this system.KEY WORDS:Collaborative Design, Task Management System (TMS), Task Decomposition, Information Management System1 IntroductionAlong with the rapid upgrade of request for advanced design methods, more and more design tool appeared to support ne
4、w 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 emp
5、loyees. 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
6、 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, allocatin
7、g design resources and making decisions about how to carry out a design project. Its functioning paradigm varies in different projects depending on the projects scale and purpose. As a result of this structure, TMS can separate its data model from its logic could bring about structure optimization a
8、nd efficiency improvement, especially in a large scale project.2 Task Management in Net-Based Collaborative Design Environment Evolution of the Design EnvironmentDuring a net-based collaborative design process, designers transform their working environment from a single PC desktop to LAN, and even e
9、xtend 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
10、 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
11、enterprises increase its sensitivity to markets and optimize the configuration of resource. Management of Resources and Activities in Net-Based Collaborative EnvironmentThe expansion of design environment also caused a new problem of how to organize the resources and design activities in that enviro
12、nment. 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 o
13、f 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 Syst
14、em 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.
15、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 Mo
16、del Basis of Task BreakdownWhen 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
17、 having at least one objective. Because large tasks can be separated into small ones, if we separate a project target into several lowerlevel 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 proje
18、ct 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
19、 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
20、. 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. And he can do the same thing as his PM done to him, re-breaking down and re-assigning tasks.So we put forward two rules for Task Breakdown in
21、 a net-based environment, incompact coupling and object-driven. Incompact coupling means the less relationship between two tasks. When two subtasks were coupled too tightly, the requirement for communication between their designers will increase a lot. Too much communication wil1 not only waste time
22、 and reduce efficiency, but also bring errors. It will become much more difficult to manage project process than usually in this situation. On the other hand every task has its own objective. From the view point of PM of a superior task each subtask could be a black box and how to execute these subt
23、asks is unknown. The PM concerns only the results and constraints of these subtasks, and may never concern what will happen inside it. Task Breakdown MethodAccording to the above basis, a project can be separated into several subtasks. And when this separating continues, it will finally be decompose
24、d into a task tree. Except the root of the tree is a project, all eaves and branches are subtasks. Since a design project can be separated into a task tree, all its resources can be added to it depending on their relationship. For example, a Small-Sized-Satellite.Design (3SD) project can be broken d
25、own into two design objectives as Satellite Hardware. Design (SHD) and Satellite-Software-Exploit (SSE). And it also has two teams. Design team A and design team B which we regard as design resources. When A is assigned to SSE and B to SHD. We break down the project as shown in Fig 1.It is alike to
26、manage other resources in a project in this way. So when we define a collaborative design projects task model, we should first claim the projects targets. These targets include functional goals, performance goals, and quality goals and so on. Then we could confirm how to execute this project. Next w
27、e can go on to break down it. The project can be separated into two or more subtasks since there are at 1east two partners in a collaborative project. Either we could separate the project into stepwise tasks, which have time sequence relationships in case of some more complex projects and then break
28、 down the stepwise tasks according to their phase-to-phase goals.There is also another trouble in executing a task breakdown. When a task is broken into severa1 subtasks; it is not merely “a simple sum motion” of other tasks. In most cases their subtasks could have more complex relations.To solve th
29、is problem we use constraints. There are time sequence constraint (TSC) and logic constraint (LC). The time sequence constraint defines the time relationships among subtasks. The TSC has four different types, FF, FS, SF and SS. F means finish and S presents start. If we say Tabb is FS and lag four d
30、ays, it means Tb should start no later than four days after Ta is finished.The logic constraint is much more complicated. It defines logic relationship among multiple tasks.Here is given an example:“Task TA is separated into three subtasks, Ta, T b and Tc. But there are two more rules.Tb and Tc can
31、not be executed until Ta is finished.Tb and Tc can not be executed both,that means if Tb was executed, Tc should not be executed, and vice versa. This depends on the result of Ta.”So we say Tb and Tc have a logic constraint. After finishing breaking down the tasks, we can get a task tree as Fig, 2 i
32、llustrates.4 TMS Realization TMS StructureAccording to our discussion about task tree model and task breakdown basis, we can develop a Task Management System (TMS) based on Co Design Space using Java language, JSP technology and Microsoft SQL 2000. The task management systems structure is shown in Fig. 3.TMS has four main modules namely Task Breakdown, Role Management, Statistics and Query and Data Integration. The Task Breakdown module helps users to work out task tree. Role Management module performs au
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