Framework for the development of static and flexible collaborative solutions

The development of applications and solutions to support collaborative environments targeted to real businesses means that often there is a choice to be performed: Either the business is forced to comply with the specifications and technologies defined in the collaborative environment or otherwise it is the development of solutions that must be specific and hardcoded for the specificities of each business. Whereas the first approach has the advantage of allowing future improvements centrally, as well as promoting enterprises to follow best-practices, has as major drawback the need forthese enterprises to change, which is not admissible. On the other hand, specific and dedicated development is much more focused and targeted to the enterprises' real needs; however, this approach not only is much more expensive to the enterprise itself, but it also creates a dependency towards the software developer, and makes the system less prone to evolution and best-practice following. This paper presents a third approach to the development of this type of solutions, which consists of a static, evolvable architecture and processes, complemented by a suite of specific modules that are meant to tailor the application to the needs of the business, proposed in the form of contributions to the system. This approach is then exemplified in the scope of a realuse-case, as it is being implemented and validated in the context of the FP7 TIMBUS project.