OMNI: a model for focused collaborative work through issue management

The bulk of the research done on collaborative ,work has been on improving the effectiveness of meetings. Little work has been done on providing support for knowledgeintensive, physically dispersed, asynchronous group tasks. These tasks have the essential characteristics of requiring collaboration among a team of participants, consisting of complex issue structures, requiring a significant amount of shared information, and necessitating negotiation in order to reach consensus. OMNI is a domain independent, general model of collaborative issue management designed to support such tasks. This collaboration model has four key elements which must be supported group processes, dynamics of group interactions, communications, and group memory. The central feature of the model is an issue management system capable of supporting complex, domain independent issue structures. OMNI has been implemented in the initial domain of venture capital investment decision-making.