Identification of coordination requirements: implications for the Design of collaboration and awareness tools

  • Authors:

  • Marcelo Cataldo;Patrick A. Wagstrom;James D. Herbsleb;Kathleen M. Carley

  • Affiliations:

  • Carnegie Mellon University;Carnegie Mellon University;Carnegie Mellon University;Carnegie Mellon University

  • Venue:
  • CSCW '06 Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Task dependencies drive the need to coordinate work activities. We describe a technique for using automatically generated archi-val data to compute coordination requirements, i.e., who must coordinate with whom to get the work done. Analysis of data from a large software development project revealed that coordina-tion requirements were highly volatile, and frequently extended beyond team boundaries. Congruence between coordination re-quirements and coordination activities shortened development time. Developers, particularly the most productive ones, changed their use of electronic communication media over time, achieving higher congruence. We discuss practical implications of our technique for the design of collaborative and awareness tools.