SocGSD

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Social, Organizational, and Cultural Aspects of Global Software Development (socGSD)

Contents

[edit] Project Description

Global Software Development (GSD) is a growing focus of attention in universities and firms worldwide. The motives for distributing software development on a global scale include expected reductions in costs, exploiting a broader skills base, and being closer to national markets. In GSD, business units collaborate across time zones, organizational boundaries, work cultures and geographical distances, something that ultimately has led to an increasing diversification and growing complexity of collaborative working practices.


The real-world practice of developing software in globally distributed projects has been viewed from various perspectives, but technical and engineering together with managerial and organizational viewpoints have dominated the research agenda so far. However, successful participation in GSD is ultimately a matter of people in a particular local context understanding what to do in relation to other participants in other locations at a certain point in time and how it can practically be done with the resources available to local actors. GSD is not just a formal process or method; it’s a human activity. Uniquely in current GSD research in Ireland, our focus is on global software development viewed as a human activity, conducted by each participant in a local context. The main purpose of our research is to understand the local social practices of the people involved in GSD and how this local activity can contribute to global results.


The work is focused on exploring the diversity of ways in which distributed teams shape their work practices in real time and place and come to a joint understanding of their objectives. The key challenges identified in the GSD research to date mainly relate to communication and coordination; our work is an attempt to complement top-down prescriptive approaches with a bottom-up study of actual work practices, in order to achieve a better understanding of collaborative work and knowledge management processes in a distributed software development environment. Our goal is revealing the complex dynamics of work which may be difficult to articulate in formal descriptions of processes or methods, but yet pose significant constraints on how the work can be carried out. This emphasis on the actual conduct of collaborative work is influenced by our background in the CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) field, and it provides an alternative perspective on the key determinants of successful and unsuccessful global cooperative networks. We emphasize the role of work place studies as a method for informing our understanding of people’s everyday work practice. Our research methods are influenced by ethnography and mainly rely on participant observations and in situ interviews, as well as analysis of documents and of electronic communication.


Over the past year, the socGSD team has been engaged in field work in several multinational companies, mainly covering a number of sites in Ireland where software development is being conducted involving globally distributed teams. Time has also been devoted to the observation of a global open source project and to the study of a number of outsourcing relationships involving Romanian SMEs. Work is still progressing on these cases and currently the project is also looking for other interesting research opportunities to further expand its scope.

The project is part of a Lero cluster of projects investigating global software development and is funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under PI grant 03/IN3/1408C.

[edit] The project team:

[edit] Liam Bannon

. In the socGSD project, Liam is mainly interested in:

    • Coordination mechanisms in GSD
    • The role of computer support for these mechanisms, and its connection to:
      • Organisational Memory
      • Common Information Spaces
      • Knowledge Management
      • Workplace Practices
      • Communities of Practice

[edit] Gabriela Avram

focuses on:

    • The knowledge-related group activities in distributed software development (acquisition, use, share, transfer, creation), aiming at:
      • describing the interplay between corporate and personal knowledge repositories, between computer supported knowledge exchange and human interaction
      • studying the particularities of Common Information Spaces in distributed software development;
      • having a closer look at group knowledge as social construct;
      • studying the communication patterns – both for formal and for informal computer mediated communication.


[edit] Anders Sigfridsson

    • Doctoral researcher supervised by prof. Liam Bannon.
    • Main research focus:
      • Learning in practice in distributed software development.
    • Themes and topics:
      • Globally distributed software development.
      • Distributed communities of practice and social dynamics.
      • Information and collaborative technology for learning in practice.

[edit] Anne Sheehan

    • Research interests:
      • Knowledge and learning in distributed software development
      • Communities of Practice
      • The socially situated nature of knowledge and learning
      • Mentoring and the evolution of expertise within the context of software development
      • The impact of distributed software development on local work practices

[edit] Daniel Sullivan

focuses on:

    • Collaboration and Collaborative Tools applied in globally-distributed software development
    • Change Management strategies and tactics

[edit] John Bowers

[edit] Former members of the team

  • Gamel Wiredu has studied:
    • The Coordination Challenges in Global Software Development Projects
      • Software Development Process Interdependencies
      • Information Uncertainties and Equivocalities
      • Roles and Representations of technologies in use
      • Factors that engender conflicts and consequences in software development processes

was interested in:

    • The lived experience of technology
    • human Factors in Complex Systems
    • Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
    • Socio-cultural and phenomenological theory
    • Qualitative Research methods
    • Organisational psychology
  • Michael Hales has studied the following aspects:
    • The contribution that is made in organisations by 'stuff' (material artifacts). For example:
      • Physical objects, workspaces, computer systems, documents.
    • Relationships between multiple courses of action (ie within a project, or within a business), and the ways in which participants handle these. For example:
      • Making a piece of software work, on one hand; being successful in the software development business, on the other; meeting external standards, on the third hand; handling handovers between workgroups, on the fourth hand; and so on.
    • Formal codes and formal procedures - the contributions that they actually make, as distinct from the functions they are supposed to perform. For example:
      • The relationship in practice, between the work of accounting for what has been done (eg achieving sign-off for a product release) and the work of actually doing it (eg building a version and debugging it).
      • The relationship between formal procedures or specifications, and the actual conduct that participants adopt to achieve 'success'.

[edit] Contact

Gabriela Avram

[edit] Publications

[edit] 2008

Journal publications:

  • Avram,G., Bannon, L., Bowers J., Sheehan, A., Sullivan D.K. Bridging, Patching and Keeping the Work Flowing: Defect Resolution in Distributed Software Development - submitted for the Special Issue on Software Development as Cooperative Work of the Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work.
  • Avram G."Knowledge Work Practices in Global Software Development", The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol 5, Issue 4

Refereed Conference Publications:

  • Richardson, I., Avram, G., Deshpande, S.,Casey. V., "Having a Foot on Each Shore - Bridging Global Software Development in the Case of SMEs", 3rd IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Bangalore, India, 19-21st August, 2008
  • Avram, G., O'Donovan, B., Bannon, L. "What is happening behind the firewall?- The emerging role of social software in IBM.", BlogTalk 08, 3-4 March 2008, Cork, Ireland see slides

Workshop papers:

Events Organised

Invited Talks

  • Avram G. - Enterprise 2.0,28 July 2008, WIPRO Bangalore, India
  • Avram G. panelist and co-organiser - Panel Discussion - "Talking Heads: Academia-Industry - a win-win relationship", 21 August 2008, WIPRO Bangalore

[edit] 2007

Journal publications:

  • Wiredu, G. O. (2007) "Distance and Contradictory Motives in Distributed Workplace Learning for a New Profession" Journal of Education and Work, 20(4), pp. 357-377.
  • Wiredu, G. O. (2007) "User Appropriation of Mobile Technologies: Motives, Conditions and Design Properties" Information and Organization, 17(2), pp. 110-129.

Refereed Conference Publications:

  • Sigfridsson A., G. Avram, A. Sheehan, & D. K. Sullivan “Sprint-driven development: working, learning and the process of enculturation in the PyPy community” Third International Conference on Open Source Systems, Limerick, Ireland, June 11-13 2007.
  • Avram G. "Of Deadlocks and Peopleware: Colaborative Work Practices in Global Software Development", The International Conference on Global Software Engineering 2007, 27-31 August 2007, Munich, Germany
  • Avram G. "Knowledge Work Practices in Global Software Development", The European Conference on Knowledge Management, Barcelona, Spain, 6-7 September 2007
  • Wiredu, G. O. "Managing Interdependencies in Globally-Distributed Software Development", The British Academy of Management Conference, 11-13 September 2007, Warwick, UK.
  • Wiredu, G. O. "Coordinating Global Software Development Activities: Requisite Variety in Information Systems as a Dependent Variable", IFIP 8.2 & 9.5 Conference on Virtuality and Virtualization. Portland, Oregon, USA, 2007

Workshop papers:

  • Avram G. "Developing Outsourcing Relationships: A Romanian Service Provider Perspective", The First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing- Services, Knowledge and Innovation, Val d'Isere, France, 13-15 March 2007
  • C. Exton, G. Avram, J. Buckley, A. LeGear, "An Experiential Report on the Limitations of Experimentation as a Means of Empirical Investigation", 19th Annual Psychology of Programming Workshop, 2-6 July 2007, Joensuu, Finland
  • G.Avram, Sheehan A., Sullivan D.K "Defect Tracking Systems in Global Software Development-a work practice study", The Challenges of Collaborative Work in Global Software Development Workshop in conjunction with ECSCW'07, 25 Sept 2007, Limerick, Ireland

Posters

Events organized

Invited Presentations

  • Gabriela Avram - Invited talk at the Social Networks Webcamp organised by DERI, Galway, March 2007

[edit] 2006

Journals

  • Wiredu G.O. & Sorensen C. The Dynamics of Control and Mobile Computing in Distributed Activities European Journal Of Information Systems Vol 15, Issue 3 2006 (pg 307 - 319 )

Conferences:

  • Wiredu G.O. & Sullivan D. Intercultural Learning as a Strategic Response to Socio-Cultural Differences in Global Software Development Irish Academy of Management Conference Cork, Ireland 06th Sep
  • Bannon, L. & Avram, G. Constructing common information spaces in global software development, The Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems 06 Venice, Italy 05th Oct (pg 241 - 248)

Workshops:

  • Wiredu G.O. Uncovering the Reality with Virtual Software Teams Workshop on Global Software Development for the Practitioner Shanghai, China 23rd May 2006 (pg 66 - 72) Shanghai, China 23rd May 2006 (pg 66 - 72)
  • Sigfridsson A. & H. Dalhgren “Supporting harmonious cooperation in global software development projects” Workshop of Supporting the Social Side of Large-Scale Software Development (CSCW'2006). Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 4th 2006.


[edit] 2005

  • Wiredu G.O. The Reconstruction of Portable Computers: On the Flexibility of Mobile Computing in Mobile Activities IFIP 8.2 Conference Cleveland, USA 01 Aug 05 (pg 197 - 2123)
  • Wiredu G.O., Coordination as the Challenge of Distributed Software Development International Workshop on Distributed Software DiSD'05)Development Paris, France 29th Aug 05
  • Avram G., At the Crossroads of Knowledge Management and Social Software”, the 6th European Conference on Knowledge Management, University of Limerick, Ireland, 8-9 September 2005
  • Avram G., At the Crossroads of Knowledge Management and Social Software”,Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management , Vol 4 Issue 1, ISSN 1479-4411 (www.ejkm.com)

[edit] Work-(still)-in-progress

  • Prikladnicki, Boden, Avram, De Souza, Wulf - Research methods in global software development - journal tbd
  • Sigfridsson A., Sheehan A. "Learning in Practice: Facilitating Learning Through Sprints in Distributed Software Development"


[edit] References

[edit] Conferences, Workshops, Journals

[edit] Events we attended, events we organise

Better see our project's blog, Tales from the Field of Software Engineering

[edit] Links

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