It is a great advantage if the members of a group that have to decide actions have a common understanding of their decision tasks. They should agree on who has to carry out an action, what its goal is, which problems are connected with it, what the alternatives to it are, and so on. Moreover, group members should know the criteria used to evaluate whether one action is preferred to an alternative action, and they should be able to rate the importance of their decision tasks.

Zhang, Sun, and Chen define a format for the joint specification of decision tasks, and they define a process model for the generation of such tasks. Supported by an electronic brainstorming system, the participants of a decision process make motions on decision tasks. These motions are then discussed and fully specified. The discussion is computer supported: the participants make semistructured speech acts that are automatically sorted, linked, and recorded. Finally, the resulting decision tasks are classified and rated by importance. A prototype of the model was implemented and experimentally tested. Further practical studies have to be carried out in order to fully evaluate the model.