An Empirical Study of Speed and Communication in Globally Distributed Software Development
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Leveraging expertise in global software teams: Going outside boundaries
ICGSE '06 Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on Global Software Engineering
Awareness in the Wild: Why Communication Breakdowns Occur
ICGSE '07 Proceedings of the International Conference on Global Software Engineering
Team Knowledge and Coordination in Geographically Distributed Software Development
Journal of Management Information Systems
The role of domain knowledge and cross-functional communication in socio-technical coordination
Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Software Engineering
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Sharing knowledge in a timely fashion is important in distributed software development. However, because experts are difficult to locate, developers tend to broadcast information to find the right people, which leads to overload and to communication breakdowns. We study the context in which experts are included in an email discussion so that team members can identify experts sooner. In this paper, we conduct a case study examining why people emerge in discussions by examining email within a distributed team. We find that people emerge in the following four situations: when a crisis occurs, when they respond to explicit requests, when they are forwarded in announcements, and when discussants follow up on a previous event such as a meeting. We observe that emergent people respond not only to situations where developers are seeking expertise, but also to execute routine tasks. Our findings have implications for expertise seeking and knowledge management processes.