An empirical examination of interdisciplinary collaboration within the practice of localisation and development of international software

Acceptance on international markets is an important selling proposition for software products and a key to new markets. The adaptation of software products for specific markets is called software localisation. Practitioner reports and research suggests that activities of developers and translators do not mesh seamlessly, leading to problems such as disproportionate cost, lack of quality, and delayed product release. Yet, there is little research on localisation as a comprehensive activity and its human factors. This thesis examines how software localisation is handled in practice, how the localisation process is integrated into development, and how software developers and localisers work individually and collaboratively on international software. The research aims to understand how localisation issues around the above-mentioned classifications of cost, quality and time issues are caused. Qualitative and quantitative data is gathered through semi-structured interviews and an online survey. The interviews focused on the individual experiences of localisation and development professionals in a range of relevant roles. The online survey measured cultural competence, attitude towards and self-efficacy in localisation, and properties of localisation projects. Interviews were conducted and analysed following Straussian Grounded Theory. The survey was statistically analysed to test a number of hypotheses regarding differences between localisers and developers, as well as relationships between project properties and software quality. Results suggest gaps in knowledge, procedure and motivation between developers and translators, as well as a lack of cross-disciplinary knowledge and coordination. Further, a grounded theory of interdisciplinary collaboration in software localisation explains how collaboration strategies and conflicts reciprocally affect each other and are affected by external influences. A number of statistically significant differences between developers and localisers and the relevance of certain project properties to localisation were confirmed. The findings give new insights into interdisciplinary issues in the development of international software and suggest new ways to handle interdisciplinary collaboration in general

Resigned robots and aspiring artisans: a conceptualisation of the IT service support worker

In the last two decades the IT service support worker has emerged to be a worker-type of considerable socio-economic importance. Such workers are symbolic of the trends towards the importance of information/knowledge and information technology within modern economic/political systems. Such systems, heavily influenced by governmental bodies and business organisations, have aggrandised the use of rationalising customer-centric management techniques. And yet such symbolic workers are largely hidden and unacknowledged as a specific type of worker in the business literature. This thesis represents an attempt to conceptualise the IT service support worker as a worker-type, inducing a conceptual model that identifies three aspects to the worker: information systems worker; knowledge worker and service worker and considers them from each of these perspectives. This qualitative research draws on a rich mix of observational and interview data collected across five UK organisations to produce a narrative that suggests that, for different IT service support workers, those different aspects tend to be variably emphasised within their team roles. The study additionally offers a theoretical conclusion that IT service support workers might reasonably be divided into different classes depending upon not only the design of their team role but also their individual career orientations and the nature of the knowledge they actually use in their work. Four such classes are identified as being of particular significance and these are evocatively named: Resigned Robots ; Constrained Careerists ; Establishment Experts and Aspiring Artisans . Whilst being outside of the scope of this study, it is suggested that this novel typology might also be useful for classifying other worker groupings. The study is intended to be useful for the enhancement of IT service management practice and makes several contributions in this regard. These include the need for managers to recognise the importance of experientially-acquired knowledge for efficiency in IT service support work and a suggestion that managers might tailor HRM practices for different classes of worker