Tools for Supporting Team Collaboration

Collaboration plays an important role in team tasks. Teams are also functioning more often in a distributed fashion. If individuals are to work efficiently in a distributed fashion they will need collaborative tools and systems to exchange information and most importantly Situation Awareness (SA). Little guidance exists as to which tools are appropriate for collaborative tasks or situations. The present paper presents a taxonomy of collaboration and, based on this taxonomy, information is provided on which classes of collaborative tools and techniques are most useful for different types of tasks and situations.