Distance, dependencies, and delay in a global collaboration

  • Authors:

  • James D. Herbsleb;Audris Mockus;Thomas A. Finholt;Rebecca E. Grinter

  • Affiliations:

  • Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL;Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL;School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI;Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA

  • Venue:
  • CSCW '00 Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

Collaborations over distance must contend with the loss of the rich, subtle interactions that co-located teams use to coordinate their work. Previous research has suggested that one consequence of this loss is that cross-site work will take longer than comparable single-site work. We use both survey data and data from the change management system to measure the extent of delay in a multi-site software development organization. We also measure site interdependence, differences in same-site and cross-site communication patterns, and analyze the relationship of these variables to delay. Our results show a significant relationship between delay in cross-site work and the degree to which remote colleagues are perceived to help out when workloads are heavy. This result is particularly troubling in light of the finding that workers generally believed they were as helpful to their remote colleagues as to their local colleagues. We discuss implications of our findings for collaboration technology for distributed organizations.