Detecting Coordination Problems in Collaborative Software Development Environments

Software development is rarely an individual effort and generally involves teams of developers collaborating to generate good reliable code. Among the software code there exist technical dependencies that arise from software components using services from other components. The different ways of assigning the design, development, and testing of these software modules to people can cause various coordination problems among them. We claim\ud that the collaboration of the developers, designers and testers must be related to and governed by the technical task structure. These collaboration practices are handled in what we call Socio-Technical Patterns.\ud The TESNA project (Technical Social Network Analysis) we report on in this paper addresses this issue. We propose a method and a tool that a project manager can use in order to detect the socio-technical coordination problems. We test the method and tool in a case study of a small and innovative software product company

Exploring the Impact of Socio-Technical Core-Periphery Structures in Open Source Software Development

In this paper we apply the social network concept of core-periphery structure to the sociotechnical structure of a software development team. We propose a socio-technical pattern that can be used to locate emerging coordination problems in Open Source projects. With the help of our tool and method called TESNA, we demonstrate a method to monitor the socio-technical core-periphery movement in Open Source projects. We then study the impact of different core-periphery movements on Open Source projects. We conclude that a steady core-periphery shift towards the core is beneficial to the project, whereas shifts away from the core are clearly not good. Furthermore, oscillatory shifts towards and away from the core can be considered as an indication of the instability of the project. Such an analysis can provide developers with a good insight into the health of an Open Source project. Researchers can gain from the pattern theory, and from the method we use to study the core-periphery movements

TESNA: A Tool for Detecting Coordination Problems

Detecting problems in coordination can prove to be very difficult. This is especially true in large globally distributed environments where the Software Development can quickly go out of the Project Manager’s control. In this paper we outline a methodology to analyse the socio-technical coordination structures. We also show how this can be made easier with the help of a tool called TESNA that we have developed

Coordination in Open Source versus Commercial Software Development

Process patterns based on particular coordination mechanisms have been used to describe and understand the work practices of commercial software development. However, there has not been much work done on whether the specific coordination mechanisms noticed in commercial software development are indeed applicable to Open Source software development projects. Such an analysis can help managers of Open Source projects in coordinating their project. In this paper we explore whether three Commercial software development patterns are applicable to Open Source software development projects. We do this through an analysis of published case studies

Improving coordination in software development through social and technical network analysis

Today’s dynamic and distributed development environment brings significant challenges\ud for software project management. In distributed project settings, “management by walking\ud around” is no longer an option, and project managers may miss out on key project insights.\ud At the same time, the high coordination requirements caused by the dynamic distributed\ud environment can cause many coordination difficulties and can even lead to coordination\ud breakdowns. In response to some of these problems, researchers have developed detailed\ud patterns for describing the preferred relationships between the team communication structure\ud (the social network) and the technical software architecture. We call such patterns\ud Socio-Technical Patterns. As they capture a wide variety of knowledge and experience\ud Socio, Technical and Socio-Technical Patterns (or Socio/Technical Patterns in short) are\ud potentially very useful for the project manager in planning and monitoring complex development\ud projects. However, these patterns are hard to implement and monitor in practice.\ud The reason behind this is that it is difficult to find coordination problems in order to apply\ud the solutions provided by the Socio/Technical Patterns, as purely manual techniques are\ud labour intensive. Especially within dynamic and iterative distributed environments, the use\ud of Socio/Technical Patterns is challenging. But, even in small companies, employing between\ud 20 and 50 developers (ref Chapter 5 and 6), the social network and the relation to the\ud software tasks can get quite complicated for the software manager to track. As part of the\ud TESNA (TEchnical Social Network Analysis) project, we have developed a method and a\ud tool that a project manager can use in order to identify specific coordination problems that\ud we call Socio/Technical Structure Clashes (STSCs). We have evaluated the TESNA\ud method and tool in two commercial case studies (Chapters 5 and 6) and multiple case studies\ud in the Open Source development environment (Chapter 7)

The applicability of a use value-based file retention method

The determination of the relative value of files is important for an organization while determining a retrieval service level for its files and a corresponding file retention policy. This paper discusses via a literature review methods for developing file retention policies based on the use values of files. On basis of these results we propose an enhanced version of one of them. In a case study, we demonstrate how one can develop a customized file retention policy by testing causal relations between file parameters and the use value of files. This case shows that, contrary to suggestions of previous research, the file type has no significant relation with the value of a file and thus should be excluded from a retention policy in this case. The case study also shows a strong relation between the position of a file user and the value of this file. Furthermore, we have improved the Information Value Questionnaire (IVQ) for subjective valuation of files. However, the resulting method needs software to be efficient in its application. Therefore, we developed a prototype for the automatic execution of a file retention policy. We conclude with a discussio

Using E-markets for Globally Distributed Work

For over a decade, dedicated E-markets have been facilitating globally distributed systems development by enhancing the traditionally high-risk global sourcing processes. At the same time, the success and potential of E-markets for sourcing project globally can be questioned, as E-markets embody a variety of temporal, geographical and socio-cultural gaps. To study the effectiveness of the mechanisms offered by the E-markets, we ran a field experiment in which four development teams worked for 10 weeks to have a software development product designed, programmed and tested by remote developer(s) using an E-market. Three out of the four teams managed to deliver a successful product within time and budget. This result exceeded our expectations and contradicts the critical observations and opinions in several blogs and news articles. We find that for effective e-Market sourcing a skilled customer team with competences including vendor selection, software contracting, software requirements specification, development methods, cross-cultural and virtual communications, use of various cloud based tools, frequent functional and non functional testing are necessary

Evaluating the Applicability of a Use Value-Based File Retention Method

A well constructed file retention policy can help a company determine the relative value and the corresponding retrieval service level of the different files it owns. Though such a retention policy is useful, the method one can use to arrive at such a policy is under-researched. This paper discusses how one can arrive at a method (based on a systematic literature review) for developing file retention policies based on use values of files. In the case study, we demonstrate how one can develop a file retention policy by testing of causal relations between file retention policy parameters and the use value of files. This case study shows that, contrary to suggestions of previous research, the file type has no significant causal relation with the value of a file and thus should be excluded from a retention policy in this case. The case study also shows that there is a strong causal relation between the position of a user of a file and the value of this file. Furthermore, we have amended an existing subjective file valuation method, namely, the Information Value Questionnaire (IVQ). However, to make file retention methods effective and reliable a substantially more case experiences need to be collected

Matrix based problem detection in the application of software process patterns

Software development is rarely an individual effort and generally involves teams of developers. Such col- laborations require proper communication and regular coordination among the team members. In addition, coordination is required to sort out problems due to technical dependencies that exist when components of one part of the architecture requires services or data input from components of another part of the architecture. The dynamic allocation of the different tasks to people results in various socio-technical structure clashes (STSCs). These STSCs become more pronounced in an Agile Software Development environment and managerial intervention is constantly required to alleviate problems due to STSCs. In this paper we propose a technique based on dependency matrices that detects STSCs in the organizational process structure. We illustrate this technique using two examples from Organizational and Process Pattern literature