Cybernetics of Conflict within Multi-Partner Technology and Software Engineering Programmes

Large technology and software engineering programmes, such as enterprise system pro- grammes, are increasingly implemented through a mixture of customer and specialist third-party resources. These multi-partner working environments can be thought of as a complex social system, which oftentimes experience various forms of conflict. This can be due to competing objectives and priorities of the various organizations, along with incompatibilities of team members within the work-based social network of the implementation programme. If not brought under control, conflict can lead to complex emergent behaviours and dynamics within the wider social network, which can severely impact the likelihood of successful programme implementation of these software-intensive systems. Using social network analysis and thematic coding analysis within a case study, we show that the project management of complex software-intensive implementations requires considerable focus on control and communication across the programme-wide social network of team members, which we represent as a cybernetic system. A conceptual framework has been developed that extends extant literature around conflict in teams by framing the individual projects and the overall programme-wide implementation as cybernetic systems. The conceptual framework illustrates how a cybernetics approach to conflict within enterprise system implementations, can provide new insights into how conflict develops within project teams. Finally, we argue that the cybernetic approach allows us to develop project management interventions to mitigate the risk of conflict development, or control and regulate conflict once it has developed. We conclude by setting the agenda for future research on how conflict can be controlled within the implementation of software-intensive systems, such as enterprise systems

Diverse virtual social networks: Implications for remote software testing teams

This paper evaluates offshore outsourcing in the IT testing industry and determines what conditions determine its success. There is particular focus on the influence of diversity in teams on group relationships. Two studies are described: the first, investigated the perceptions of professional software testers on the critical factors of offshore outsourcing; and the second study looked at the ability for diverse teams to form close working relationships through virtual networks. We find that overt diversity factors inhibit interaction across nationality boundaries. The limitations of virtual networks for fostering personal communications is apparent in preventing group members from overcoming the initial aversion to mix with out-group members, which could be achieved with closer and more personal communications between members with different diversity factors in normal face to face communications. Where software testing teams are outsourced globaly, and must rely on virtual communications, there seems potential for significant difficulties in developing close working relationships, which on the one hand, can be negative for group cohesion, but one the other hand, can be positive for encouraging imparitality

git2net - Mining Time-Stamped Co-Editing Networks from Large git Repositories

Data from software repositories have become an important foundation for the empirical study of software engineering processes. A recurring theme in the repository mining literature is the inference of developer networks capturing e.g. collaboration, coordination, or communication from the commit history of projects. Most of the studied networks are based on the co-authorship of software artefacts defined at the level of files, modules, or packages. While this approach has led to insights into the social aspects of software development, it neglects detailed information on code changes and code ownership, e.g. which exact lines of code have been authored by which developers, that is contained in the commit log of software projects. Addressing this issue, we introduce git2net, a scalable python software that facilitates the extraction of fine-grained co-editing networks in large git repositories. It uses text mining techniques to analyse the detailed history of textual modifications within files. This information allows us to construct directed, weighted, and time-stamped networks, where a link signifies that one developer has edited a block of source code originally written by another developer. Our tool is applied in case studies of an Open Source and a commercial software project. We argue that it opens up a massive new source of high-resolution data on human collaboration patterns.Comment: MSR 2019, 12 pages, 10 figure

Building capacity in climate change policy analysis and negotiation: methods and technologies

Capacity building is often cited as the reason “we cannot just pour money into developing countries” and why so many development projects fail because their design does not address local conditions. It is therefore a key technical and political concept in international development. Some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their vulnerability is in part due to a lack of capacity to plan and anticipate the effects of climate change on crops, water resources, urban electricity demand etc. What capacities do these countries lack to deal with climate change? How will they cope? What steps can they take to reduce their vulnerability? This innovative and high-profile research project was part of a larger project (called C3D) and conducted with non-governmental organisations in Senegal, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The research involved several participatory workshops and a questionnaire to all three research centres