Rosalba Giuffrida

Background: In Global Software Development (GSD) the lack of face-to-face communication is a major challenge and effective computer-mediated practices are necessary to mitigate the effect of physical distance. Communication through Social Software (SoSo) supports team coordination, helping to deal with geographical distance; however, in Software Engineering literature, there is a lack of suitable theoretical concepts to analyze and describe everyday practices of globally-distributed software… Vis mere

Background: In Global Software Development (GSD) the lack of face-to-face communication is a major challenge and effective computer-mediated practices are necessary to mitigate the effect of physical distance. Communication through Social Software (SoSo) supports team coordination, helping to deal with geographical distance; however, in Software Engineering literature, there is a lack of suitable theoretical concepts to analyze and describe everyday practices of globally-distributed software development teams and to study the role of communication through SoSo.
Objective: The paper proposes a theoretical framework for analyzing how communicative and coordinative practices are constituted and maintained in globally-distributed teams.
Results: Coordination mechanisms and communicative genres mutually support each other. In particular, communication through SoSo supports team members in establishing, developing and maintaining social protocols within the distributed team. Software Engineering tools and methods provide templates for coordination mechanism that need to be adapted and adopted in order to support the project at hand. SoSo serves as a medium for the necessary metawork. The theoretical framework proposed is used to describe both the practices in an established industrial project and the establishing of practices in three student teams. The framework allows explaining the heterogeneity of practices observed.
Conclusions: This paper presents a conceptual framework to study the role of communication through SoSo for coordination in GSD. The usefulness of the framework is supported by empirical findings on the role of SoSo. The theoretical framework can be beneficial for future research that aims to analyze and describe not only the role of SoSo, but also how communicative and coordinative practices can be established and maintained in GSD teams. Vis mindre

In Global Software Development (GSD), the lack of face-to-face communication is a
major challenge and effective computer-mediated practices are necessary. This paper
analyzes cooperative practices supported by Social Software (SoSo) in a GSD student
project. The empirical results show that the role of SoSo is to support informal
communication, enabling social talks and metawork, both necessary for establishing and for
maintaining effective coordination mechanisms, thus… Vis mere

In Global Software Development (GSD), the lack of face-to-face communication is a
major challenge and effective computer-mediated practices are necessary. This paper
analyzes cooperative practices supported by Social Software (SoSo) in a GSD student
project. The empirical results show that the role of SoSo is to support informal
communication, enabling social talks and metawork, both necessary for establishing and for
maintaining effective coordination mechanisms, thus successful cooperation. Vis mindre

Background
In Global Software Development (GSD), informal communication and knowledge sharing play an important role. Social Software (SoSo) has the potential to support and foster this key responsibility. Research on the use of SoSo in GSD is still at an early stage: although a number of empirical studies on the usage of SoSo are available in related fields, there exists no comprehensive overview of what has been investigated to date across them.
Objective
The aim of this review is to… Vis mere

Background
In Global Software Development (GSD), informal communication and knowledge sharing play an important role. Social Software (SoSo) has the potential to support and foster this key responsibility. Research on the use of SoSo in GSD is still at an early stage: although a number of empirical studies on the usage of SoSo are available in related fields, there exists no comprehensive overview of what has been investigated to date across them.
Objective
The aim of this review is to map empirical studies on the usage of SoSo in Software Engineering projects and in distributed teams, and to highlight the findings of research works which could prove to be beneficial for GSD researchers and practitioners.
Method
A Systematic Mapping Study is conducted using a broad search string that allows identifying a variety of studies which can be beneficial for GSD. Papers have been retrieved through a combination of automatic search and snowballing, hence a wide quantitative map of the research area is provided. Additionally, text extracts from the studies are qualitatively synthesised to investigate benefits and challenges of the use of SoSo.
Results
SoSo is reported as being chiefly used as a support for collaborative work, fostering awareness, knowledge management and coordination among team members. Contrary to the evident high importance of the social aspects offered by SoSo, socialisation is not the most important usage reported.
Conclusions
This review reports how SoSo is used in GSD and how it is capable of supporting GSD teams. Four emerging themes in global software engineering were identified: the appropriation and development of usage structures; understanding how an ecology of communication channels and tools are used by teams; the role played by SoSo either as a subtext or as an explicit goal; and finally, the surprising low percentage of observational studies. Vis mindre

One of the hallmarks of a co-located agile team is the simple and open flow of information between its members. In a co-located setting, peripheral awareness, osmotic communication and simple information radiators support agile principles such as collective ownership, minimal documentation and simple design, and facilitate smooth collaboration. However in a dispersed agile team, where individual team members are distributed across several sites, these mechanisms are not available and… Vis mere

One of the hallmarks of a co-located agile team is the simple and open flow of information between its members. In a co-located setting, peripheral awareness, osmotic communication and simple information radiators support agile principles such as collective ownership, minimal documentation and simple design, and facilitate smooth collaboration. However in a dispersed agile team, where individual team members are distributed across several sites, these mechanisms are not available and information sharing has to be more explicit. Research into distributed software development has been tackling similar issues, but little work has been reported into dispersed agile teams. This paper reports on a field study of one successful partially dispersed agile team. Using a distributed cognition analysis which focuses on information propagation and transformation within the team we investigate how the team collaborates and compare our findings with those from co-located teams. Vis mindre

Communication plays a vital role in software development projects. Globally distributed teams use a mix of different communication channels to get the work done. In this paper, we report on an empirical study of a team distributed across Denmark and India. This paper explores the integration of formal documentation, bug-tracking systems and email with informal communication on Instant Messaging (IM), screen sharing, and audio conversations. Whenever overlap times occur, informal communication… Vis mere

Communication plays a vital role in software development projects. Globally distributed teams use a mix of different communication channels to get the work done. In this paper, we report on an empirical study of a team distributed across Denmark and India. This paper explores the integration of formal documentation, bug-tracking systems and email with informal communication on Instant Messaging (IM), screen sharing, and audio conversations. Whenever overlap times occur, informal communication can take place at the same time in different sites, and it can effectively complement formal documentation. Our analysis provides an indication that IM can play a special role in such socio-technical communication systems: IM acts as a real time glue between different channels. The communication through IM also provides a means to build trust and social relationships with co-workers. Vis mindre

Reuse and integration are major steps in the ontology development process, often unavoidable to lower the costs of a new application. We address the two issues with an engineering approach, and provide a comprehensive account of the state of the art. The domain of e-learning is chosen as a test-bed to verify the feasibility of methods. Reuse and integration are shown to be effective in constructing domain representations with larger coverage and enhanced reasoning capabilities, which… Vis mere

Reuse and integration are major steps in the ontology development process, often unavoidable to lower the costs of a new application. We address the two issues with an engineering approach, and provide a comprehensive account of the state of the art. The domain of e-learning is chosen as a test-bed to verify the feasibility of methods. Reuse and integration are shown to be effective in constructing domain representations with larger coverage and enhanced reasoning capabilities, which significantly extend the expressiveness of semantic software. Problems emerge from the lack of explicit representations of the assumptions taken: when reusing an ontology, one implicitly commits to the underlying context. We conclude that a new methodology should be put forward that views the development as a collaborative work within a community of stakeholders. Vis mindre