Companies are more and more focused on the organizational aspects which enable them to structure their complex processes. Thus new needs appear for better defining, coordinating and controlling the co-operative teams and activities. The object of this study is the definition of a framework which assists co-operative work while bringing to the actors a help to the co-operation. The definition of this framework is inspired by the improvement procedure of CMM (Capability Maturity Model), used in ISO SPICE. The approach is composed by 4 axes which correspond to the progressive actions to implement in order to define an adequate organization of the co-operative activities. Axis 1 relates to the structuring of the activities: analysis of dependences between activities, gathering and/or decomposition in tasks, workgroups scheduling. Axis 2 relates to the characterization of the activities according to the workgroups interactions: definition of the roles and management of the interfaces between workgroups. Axis 3 relates to the work organization evaluation according to the iteration count between activities: estimate of the lead times, loads and costs. Axis 4 relates to the work organization optimization according to the results of evaluation: implementation of various solutions for activities organization and execution. Methods resulting from the graph theory, partitioning techniques and performance evaluation are proposed to support each axis. A software tool was developed to implement these proposals. It makes it possible to analyze, break up and evaluate complex processes. It gives an effective support for the decision-making in management, the dynamic control of the co-operative processes, for the definition and the reconfiguration of network architecture...
