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Software development is increasingly distributed across geographical, political, social, and cultural boundaries. Enterprises that wish to take advantage of globalization require innovative techniques, tools, and practices to overcome the various difficulties of organizing and managing globally distributed software development. The field of Global Software Development (GSD) or Global Software Engineering (GSE) as it is sometimes called, has developed as a transdisciplinary research arena bringing together both software engineers as well as social scientists and organization theorists involved in examining various aspects of how globally distributed software teams function. While there have been occasional empirical studies of distributed software development activities over the years, appearing both in the SE and CSCW literatures, there is still a dearth of well-designed studies that provide good examples of field research in the area. Certain more experimental studies on problem-solving in teams have been performed, as well as interview studies with management referring to problems in distributed coordination and management, but extensive participative field study material on actual workplace practices is relatively meagre. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers actively involved in such field studies of distributed software work, taking a special interest in the ways in which global issues impact on local work practices and vice-versa. We aim to contribute to a broader understanding of global software engineering.
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers in the GSE field who wish to examine the strengths and limitations of empirical research methods being deployed in the field. Methods are not simply techniques to be chosen and deployed at will, but are constructed from particular conceptual worldviews, and entail theoretical commitments. Actual use of methods also requires training and a sensitivity to the local situation. These issues are often not adequately dealt with before the researcher enters the field.
In order to discuss this topic in a concrete fashion, we are soliciting workshop papers from researchers who are actively engaged in empirical studies of GSE. The workshop will collect empirical findings and relate them to the methods applied. It will consist of a discussion on the strengths and limitations of particular approaches, the variety of ways in which methods can be used in practice, grounded in a series of specific GSE case studies. We are particularly interested in field studies of actual in situ practices of software engineers.
The one day workshop will bring together a maximum of 20 participants. The accepted papers will be made available to the participants in advance and discussants will be assigned to each paper. The morning session will include an introduction of the workshop objectives, followed by a working session where the discussions will be based on the material provided by the participants. In the afternoon, we will focus on the broad picture resulted, highlighting strengths and limitations of the material provided by the participants. At the end of the day, we will wrap up with a session dedicated to outlining a list of issues that need to be addressed in future research in the area.
Our intended audience is primarily researchers who are actively engaged in empirical studies of GSE. We will encourage a mix of graduate students, new faculty, and established researchers to participate.
Prospective participants are invited to submit short papers (4-6 pages) on their field study research, providing an account of the rationale for the choice of research method(s) being used, showing how it relates to the research questions being examined, the experiences of the authors in actually carrying out the fieldwork using this method, and interesting findings gained by this methods. The methods must be seen in action in particular cases, and both reports of research in progress and completed studies will be accepted. Papers simply outlining plans for future empirical research are not acceptable. Each paper will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. The selection will be based primarily on the ability of the papers to generate fruitful discussion of important issues and also to provide examples of practice-related, high quality case studies.At least one author of each accepted paper must attend the workshop.
Email your submission (.doc or .pdf format) to Gabriela dot Avram at ul dot ie Notification of acceptance: June 30, 2008
The assessment of the submitted material by two independent reviewers, a discussant and the other participants will provide the authors with useful feedback regarding their own work. The workshop participants will also be involved in formulating a list of issues that need to be further addressed by the research community. Depending on the outcome of the Workshop discussions and on the interest of the participants, we may explore further publication outlets for the Workshop papers – e.g. a special issue on empirical research methods in Global Software Engineering in a journal such as Empirical Software Engineering, Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, or Information and Software Technology.
Gabriela Avram is a research fellow at the Interaction Design Center, University of Limerick, currently working on a project focusing on cultural, organisational and social aspects of globally distributed software development. She is particularly studying collaborative work practices in this context, employing ethnographically-informed methods. Coming from a Knowledge Management background, Gabriela's area of expertise also includes social software, social networks and online facilitation.
Liam Bannon is Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems and Director of the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick. His research interests include interaction design, human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, computer-supported collaborative learning, cognitive ergonomics, new media, and social dimensions of new technologies.
Alexander Boden is a Cutural Anthropologist and works as a research assistant at the Institute for Information Systems and New Media (University of Siegen). Currently he is working at the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Information Technology (FIT) within a shared research project. His areas of research are centered on the role of coordination and communication practices in the context of global software development (offshoring) as well as on the utilization of ethnographic methods.
Volker Wulf is Professor of Information Systems at the University of Siegen and a senior researcher at Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Information Technology (FhG-FIT). Moreover, he heads the International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI), Bonn. He studied computer science and business administration at the RWTH Aachen and the University of Paris VI, got a PhD at the University of Dortmund and a Habilitation Degree in computer science at the University of Hamburg. Right now he spends a sabbatical at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Stanford University, Palo Alto. He published more than 170 papers and 9 books. His research interests lie primarily in the areas of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Information Systems, Human Computer Interaction, Participatory Design, Computer Supported Cooperative Learning, Knowledge Management, and Organizational Computing.
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