Applicability Of Online Collaboration Tools

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The internet grows more than expectation from the time its birth. Internet is play a very important role in basic part of our day-to-day life as of now. So, most of the people spend a fair share of their time on it, as: doing work, having fun, surfing on internet, be in touch, and etc.

In these days, we see many business and also individual’s people can get many benefits from the use of the internet. That happened from use of the internet comprehensively with uses of different model of internet applications that developed to the standards of the modern world.

Internet as technology is growing strongly. For be better and more resourceful, web applications are coming into demand. "Advances in wireless technology and web-enabled application are triggering a new wave of mobile web application" (Ginige & Murugesam, 2002).

From the word mobile in last sentence we can understand two things. First, it is an application for handheld devices that supported wireless or second, it is just a platform for independent applications. Therefore, the convolution of these show, internet applications advancing day-to-day in depth and size.

According to previously and adding activity of web development there are many challenges the developers are facing to them such as: meeting the requirements and deliver the expected product to the market. For the requirements gathering, planning, and etc. there are several risks and issues that they tend to come up. Communication between the project parties and menace the final product as well as sometimes completely derail the project are some of them.

For elude from that said issues in development process, there are many development methodologies. However, the important things that should be said is customer’s requirements and expectations that they are two important element to control the development process.

Between the methodologies you can find some methodology like (DSDM) development methodology which is the methodology that can be flexible to adopting development process to changing customer’s requirements (Consortim DSDM, 2008).

So, the basic and main issue that the development process is facing with that is communication between project manager, development team, and clients. The reason of this problem can be that there is no following communication between involved parties in the development methodology.

Therefore, the question is here: How can improve or resolve this issue?

In this proposal I want show how we can relieve the said issue with using Collaboration tools to relieve of web development.

Giving full attention to the use of a development environment, needs to you try to find areas of vulnerability to gain a better understanding of the case and to provide a tool and framework that is specific to the expectation and the required customers.

Basically, for getting information and having a good understanding of the development it is need to study around the companies and their employees and also, doing a same research and study on the interact of the customers with their development process.

Background and Literature Review

"As web applications have evolved the demands placed on Web-based systems and the complexity of designing, developing, maintaining, and managing these systems have also increased significantly" (Ginige & Murugesam, 2002). This is can be understandable since current web applications are meet certain standards, both technical and Commercial, while considering the needs of clients. While in the arena creative visualization is a standard web nowadays, it requires particular skill on the side of developers, while being able to manipulate the actual behavior of complex programming language.

However, this greater emphasis press that web development is a complex and tedious thereby supporting face several problems of all kinds during the development process and is a threat, even following a guidelines established by through a development methodology.

This gives more seriously the need to find a solution, use the collaboration tools.

For the collaboration tools that available for both as off, the shelf software as well as web services, there are many types that let users to use the services over the internet in that web space that gives to them.

However, it is significant that the increased adoption of these tools have emerged in the last decade (Onyechi & Abeysinghe, 2009), demonstrating that several institution and individuals seeking the benefits of using these tools. Therefore, it has been applied only in one aspect to be interactive and social. Totally, some of tools basically used for learning, social learning, and marketing tools (Ginige & Murugesam, 2002). There have been many studies in the past for collaboration tools that are viable in different media, such as learning, e-commerce, and etc.

More especially the study conducted by the University of Bayreuth, which involved the use of Moodle, a learning management to create an e-learning environment (Goetz, et al., 2010). The study showed promising and fruitful provided data, allowing researchers to develop a platform generic bade that has a great potential for future use, it has already promised drivers of potential customers. This showed a particular focus on how collaboration tools can be flexible, which in turn gives an understanding of these tools come in many forms and can be used in various environment.

The next study that did for this topic it is conducted at the Bara Institute of Science and Technology. In this Institute conducted a research that was about an existing collaboration social network for developers i.e. Sourcefage.net (Ohira, et al., 2005), which it was about how the developers can share their codes and contributing to online project with using of this tool and also it showed how that collaboration tool was worked.

With all of these studies established that provides online collaboration tools are effective in their respective environment. However, it is also complex and depends largely on the adoption and implementation for best results. Several studies have mentioned above provided that the development process is complex and unstable, where studies as there have been several collaboration tools on how can be effective in helping their users.

The research proposed here will further survey the option of collaboration tools in the focused development arena.

Aims

The main aim of this research is to develop a general understanding of how online collaboration tools, and enforce these aspects of these tools in the web development environment in which they can help to avoid common problems and more specifically unique.

To add, the research will gain a better understanding of the nature of the current trends in web development and methodologies used along the lines of identifying common barriers to development. That would be acquired under more scope for study.

Objectives

Identify commonly used and well-known collaboration tools available and evaluated in order to obtain a general understanding of how they work, to get an idea of their limitation, and the lack of functionality.

Survey and identify strategies used in the web development environment courses and achieve a better understanding of the most common tasks, communication pattern, as well as gaps and problems.

Identify the mainly practices of web development in both sides, organization and individuals in the area.

Doing a research or study to increase better insight the different forms of communication that used by organization and individuals to keeping contact and progress reporting.

Reach an understanding on a unique set of features required by a collaboration tool specially recommended by studies that strengthen the case of an ideal prototype.

Gain a good understanding of data handling and file management involved in the process of web development project.

Intellectual Challenges

Honestly, for doing this research will be several challenged that the most obvious ones and most important part of these could be conducting the literature review of this research. As a matter of fact, the literature from two fields of study must be completely covered and evaluated to obtain a more fruitful insight, one of the study fields should be done was online collaboration, while other studies done or continuing on methods, means and frameworks on web development as a process. Literature review must to coverage all related areas of the studies and also should cover all the perspective of the scopes.

In addition, the emergence of critical thinking based on the findings of the literature review and the results of proposed future surveys proposed in this article would be another difficult task since it requires a lot of thinking outside the box, and predictive text input in the same direction. It would be a difficult feat, as several studies have already been conducted, it would probably be a very narrow focus on the dissertation.

Otherwise, self-work to cover all aspects of the study are considered very difficult and dangerous because they contain many self-study based on the area and the environment. To add, having to conduct investigations in the field of web development tools and online collaboration, since the demographic is large scale. As mentioned earlier, this includes autonomous organizations established and which are the same type of the study area, anywhere in the world and cover a good amount of them would be a much more difficult and challenging geographical task.

It would also mean that the results of certain places to consider different models given in consideration of several factors that come into play and this should be recognized beforehand to provide more meaningful data set.

Next concern that pressing is time that is provided to developers. So, planning for the any project while it is keeping up with the schedule is another difficult task. However, the emphasis on collaboration with supervisors and work with them would be useful, as well as several other pressing issues raised by the nature of the study. For example, provide a status report and realize their vision and guidance for the implementation of what is happening.

The time provided can be another challenge in coming up with the prototype model and framework as well. Since include learning tasks and be thorough with the web-based programming languages ​​necessary to achieve at least the minimum level of functionality while adhering to current web standards HTML5 or etc. (W3C, 2012).

Not to mention the ethical issues that should be considered in the context of this investigation. As mentioned earlier, the demographics of users is involved extensively in all continents, the study must meet and adhere to ethical values ​​in terms of culture, religion, race or any other factor that the value is linked to the game supports the participants. This is not a simple and easy task and it will want to do many research on how to approach and elude any legal tasks that could arise in doing the research.

The last but not least, another difficult task is testing and proofing methods and procedures for the proposed prototype. The identification of a unique set of features and rigorous testing in real time in terms of requiring a considerable amount of work. It may also involve allowing a selected set of users to work with the final product of a specific project, in the manner of a field test. Guidelines for testing must be developed and test cases must be rigorous to ensure the proper functioning of the final product. However, the test development approaches is also a concern and need to be much more rigid.

The test and evaluation does not apply only to the prototype, but, as the results of the survey. It should be evaluate in a reasonable and concept making manner that is no small task. A test that the means of achieving them, shall be submitted either in a thorough and well planned.

These challenges that mentioned above it is some of the challenges that can be faced during the research. But, these are not just challenges that will be faced in the research, there are several more. However, the general elements listed above, the challenges ahead are the most obvious and predictable.

Research Program

Methodology

Further research and studies are being conducted in the areas of interest. This will be done in the current string of research conducted over a reasonable period of relevance until these day. This will be the base on which to perform the review of the literature on the facts that give strength and focus on the purposes of this proposal.

Next is where further investigations will be carried out:

A questionnaire has been delivered and is also available online for participants involved in the field of web development. The questionnaire also contains filter options for customers / end users of the products and may also participate to contribute.

The next step, more research is conducted in collaboration tools readily available and commonly used there. Web applications such as Google Docs, Facebook, Google Plus, etc. will be charged and how they work and how organizations and individuals use these tools mentioned already collaborate in their work. The results will then be compared with the results of the questionnaire also.

The research will also be necessary to study and understand the current trends in web development activities. Standards and practices in the field will be recognized and compliance with these standards and practices are given an idea of ​​how a collaboration tool should work in such an environment.

This may require consultation and interviews with experts monitored in the field of web development and established users of collaboration tools. This would help to gain a better understanding of how users interact on both sides and in the context of developers and customers of their respective projects. This research can help in the task of acquiring knowledge about how and services are used as collaboration in the respective homes of development and how these tools will help in the development of browser-based products .

Research Plan

This research will be done after 24 weeks as you can see at table 1. This research will be breakdown in 6 tasks and each of them will be conducted at an expected time and they will have an expected result at end of the each one of them. The following is a brief of each task and show the duration and outcome of each of the tasks.

Table : Tasks Durations and outputs

Weeks (W)

Tasks

Output

Duration

W1 – W3

Research

Literature Review

3 Weeks

W4 – W9

Further Research

Report on Finding

6 Weeks

W10-W14

Design

Prototype, Usage Framework

5 Weeks

W15-W18

Testing

Result of the Testing

4 Weeks

W19-W23

Implementation

-

5 Weeks

W 24

Evaluation & conclusion

Critical Analysis on the Finding

1 Weeks

Total

-

-

24 Weeks

Task1: Research

This tasks is the first one and it is will take for 3 weeks. This will involve the studying, analysis, and understanding of current and previous work that the done in the subject area. Doing the analysis of the researches that done before can provide a foreground to the purpose of this proposal and a critical examination of each report can look at the scope of this proposal too. So, after doing these things at the end we will have a strong and good literature review.

Task2: Further Investigations

This task is included of the some activities such as interviews, studies, and observation. That they will explain at below:

To start, study can be start with asking questions from the collaborative software users and ask how they use it, which this can be done also with the developers. This part can be done as a questioner.

A collective information’s and analysis of the available options of the collaborative software and checking them that how they work, why the users choose them and what should or could be done to update them or in other hand improve them to the ideal tool.

Interviews with experts in the field of web development and major users of collaboration software to gain a better understanding of how they interact with each other through these tools.

The observation of a few selected web development houses in terms of understanding its policies and practices in their daily work.

This task needs 6 weeks to be done.

Task3: Design

In this tasks we use of all the findings of the previous tasks and also the literature review to design and develop a guideline for knowing the requirements of the collaboration tolls to be used in the web development environment and also will be develop a prototype model of collaborative tools that is developed with regard to the finding and guideline.

After that the next step is the design a framework for denote the usage of the tools that mentioned above to clearing that tools can be used in the development process.

So, as you got the output for this task is guideline, prototype, and design framework and the duration of this task is 5 weeks.

Task4: Testing

Test the proposed guideline as to whether it applies to development environments without obstacles. Tests were also carried out on how effective the rule is certified by the ideal collaboration tool that requires a development environment.

This step also involves testing a prototype against the guidelines and their functional test for compliance with standards and requirements. This may include a user test in the field of control or a limited group of expert users.

The framework is also evaluated in terms of their effectiveness in the way it produces its guidance on the use of tools to achieve the best possible results.

This task is takes 4 weeks and the output of this task is test specifications and test critical and results.

Task5: Implementation

In this case, items will be held either in an emulated environment and given the conditions of working together. Or it can be implemented in a development agreement real-time housing on both sides to give more of a field trial, where all elements are used in the composition of a web development project of a real shorter range to achieve an idea of ​​the behavior in time.

It is takes 5 weeks to conduct.

Task6: Evaluation and Conclusion

Finally, the results of all steps are accumulated and evaluated. Reflections of the work and the results showed that with the amount of effort because it will go ahead.

In addition, the strengths and weaknesses in the thesis are highlighted and which are listed below and explained why and how they occur and to the existence of these conditions, if applicable.

In conclusion, a brief glance through research in general will be covered by some points, while in the future to explore areas to carry out the very existence of the proposed study. An additional delay in the hand is used to improve the final elements of the study.

Expected Results

Literature Review on past and current studies of the subject.

Report on finding on field studies done on further researches.

Guideline Design, Partially working prototype, and Framework Design.

Testing Specification and Testing Criteria.

Test Results.

Critical Analysis on the finding and observations made through the study.