Cooperation and coordination concerns in a distributed software development project

Authors:
Lucas D. Panjer;Daniela Damian;Margaret-Anne Storey
Affiliations:
University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada;University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada;University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
Venue:
Proceedings of the 2008 international workshop on Cooperative and human aspects of software engineering
Year:
2008

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Abstract

Enabling effective coordination of work in large distributed software projects requires cooperation between participants across multiple teams, sites, and skill sets. To determine how practicing software engineers, in a distributed software development setting, maintain awareness of dependencies and coordinate to resolve dependencies in their work, we conducted a field study that used interviews and informal observation of a distributed software team. In this paper we present key interesting themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis: proximity, modification request authoring patterns, and uncooperative behaviours. We discuss these findings and outline future quantitative research plans to triangulate the methods used by software developers with recorded activities in engineering repositories to increase the generalizability of the research findings.