The geography of coordination: dealing with distance in R&D work

  • Authors:
  • Rebecca E. Grinter;James D. Herbsleb;Dewayne E. Perry

  • Affiliations:
  • Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, 263 Shuman Blvd, Naperville, IL;Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, 263 Shuman Blvd, Naperville, IL;Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, 600 Mountain View Drive, Murray Hill, NJ

  • Venue:
  • GROUP '99 Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

Geographically distributed development creates new questions about how to coordinate multi-site work. In this paper, we present four methods product development organizations used to coordinate their work: functional areas of expertise, product structure, process steps, and customization. We describe the benefits and difficulties with each model. Finally, we discuss two difficulties that occur irrespective of the model used: consequences of unequal distribution of project mass, and finding expertise.