People, Organizations, and Process Improvement
IEEE Software
Collaborative conceptual design: a large software project case study
Computer Supported Cooperative Work - Special issue on studies of cooperative design
Communication and organization in software development: an empirical study
IBM Systems Journal
Splitting the organization and integrating the code: Conway's law revisited
Proceedings of the 21st international conference on Software engineering
The geography of coordination: dealing with distance in R&D work
GROUP '99 Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work
Qualitative Methods in Empirical Studies of Software Engineering
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Types of collaborative work in software engineering
Journal of Systems and Software
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw
Exploratory sequential data analysis: foundations
Human-Computer Interaction
Editorial: Collaborative and social aspects of software development
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Audio-video recording of ad hoc software development team interactions
CHASE '09 Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects on Software Engineering
The learning component in social software engineering
Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Social software engineering
Human Resource Related Problems in Agile and Traditional Software Project Process Models
International Journal of Information Technology Project Management
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Recognised first and foremost as a technical task, the construction of software is, for the most part, a human experience. Software development is an intensive cognitive task, which also constitutes an exercise in complex interrelationships. This paper presents a case study conducted to analyse ad hoc collaborative activities taking place between team-mates during an industrial software development cycle. Observations based on audio-video recording are analysed with a methodology from social sciences research. The paper describes the observational approaches, the various methods used to validate data and how quantitative data are extracted from the qualitative observations of team-mates. Patterns of ad hoc collaboration emerging from this study are revealed, which lead us to believe that both the implicit and explicit roles of partners have a definitive impact on their ad hoc interaction profiles. As a result, this study helps to provide an understanding of some of the pivotal aspects of software engineering, such as collaboration, coordination and, more generally, work team dynamics. Further details relating to our initial motivations are included, followed by a comprehensive description of the methodological approach designed specifically for this research. Finally, some results are presented, which shed light on a real ad hoc collaboration network and support the importance of the human and social aspects of software engineering in a more substantial way.