Empirical Study of Ad Hoc Collaborative Activities in Software Engineering

Sébastien Cherry, Pierre N. Robillard

2004

Abstract

This paper presents empirical research on ad hoc collaborative activities found in an industrial software engineering setting. We believe that a better understanding of these activities and their content will help us to propose software development process enhancements and also provide some insight into the tools needed to support communications in a distributed software development environment. Further details of our motivations are included, followed by a discussion on our research methodology, and, finally, some results of a preliminary analysis confirming the significance of our data and the importance of the observed phenomenon.

References

  1. Babbie, E.: The Practice of Social Research, 9th ed., Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, CA (2001)
  2. D'Astous, P., Robillard, P.N.: Les aspects de l'échange d'information dans un processus de génie logiciel, Rapport interne, École Polytechnique de Montréal, EPM/RT-97-06 (1997)
  3. Fisher, C., Sanderson, P.: Exploratory Sequential Data Analysis: Exploring Continuous Observational Data, Interactions, Vol.3, No. 2, Mar. (1996)
  4. Grinter, R.E., Herbsleb, J.D., Perry, D.E.: The geography of coordination: Dealing with distance in R&D work, GROUP'99: International Conference on Supporting Group Work, Coordination and Negotiation, (1999) 306-315
  5. Herbsleb, J.D., Grinter, R.E.: Splitting the Organization and Integrating the Code: Conway's Law Revisited, Proceedings, International Conference on Software Engineering, Los Angeles, CA (1999) 85-95
  6. Herbsleb, J.D., Moitra, D.: Guest Editors' introduction: Global software development. IEEE Software, Vol.18 No.2, March/April (2001) 16-20
  7. Herbsleb, J.D., Mockus, A.: An empirical study of speed and communication in globally distributed software development, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol.29, No.6, June (2003) 481-494
  8. Jorgensen, D.L.: Participant Observation: A Methodology for Human Studies, Applied Social Research Methods Series; v.15, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA (1989)
  9. Kerbrat-Orrecchioni, C.: Les Interactions Verbales, Armand Colin, Paris (1998)
  10. Kitchenham B. et al., Preliminary guidelines for empirical research in software engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol.28, No.8. (2002) 721-734
  11. Perry, D.E., Staudenmayer N., Votta, L.G.: People, Organizations, and Process Improvement, IEEE Software, July (1994)
  12. Robillard, P.N.: Études des aspects cognitifs applicables au génie logiciel, Rapport interne, École Polytechnique de Montréal, EPM/RT-96/18 (1996)
  13. Robillard, P. N., Robillard, M.P.: Types of Collaborative Work in Software Engineering, The Journal of System and Software, No.53 (2000) 219-224
  14. Robillard, P. N., Kruchten, P., D'Astous, P.: Software Engineering Process with the UPEDU, Addison Wesley, Pearson Education (2002)
  15. Seaman, C.: Organizational Issues in Software Development: An Empirical Study of Communication, PhD Thesis, Computer Science Department, University of Maryland, Technical Report CS-TR-3726, UMIACS Technical Report UMIACS-TR-96-94 (1996)
  16. Seaman, C.: Qualitative methods in empirical studies of software engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol.25, No.4 (1999) 557-572
  17. Tichy, W.: Should computer scientists experiment more? Computer, Vol.31, No.5 (1998) 32-40
  18. Walker, R.J., Briand, L.C., Notkin, D., Seaman, C.B., Tichy, W.F.: Panel: Empirical Validation-What, Why, When, and How, Proceedings, International Conference on Software Engineering, Portland, Oregon (2003) 721-722
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Cherry S. and N. Robillard P. (2004). Empirical Study of Ad Hoc Collaborative Activities in Software Engineering . In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computer Supported Activity Coordination - CSAC, (ICEIS 2004) ISBN 972-8865-08-2, pages 116-125. DOI: 10.5220/0002682701160125


in Bibtex Style

@conference{csac04,
author={Sébastien Cherry and Pierre N. Robillard},
title={Empirical Study of Ad Hoc Collaborative Activities in Software Engineering},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computer Supported Activity Coordination - CSAC, (ICEIS 2004)},
year={2004},
pages={116-125},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002682701160125},
isbn={972-8865-08-2},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computer Supported Activity Coordination - CSAC, (ICEIS 2004)
TI - Empirical Study of Ad Hoc Collaborative Activities in Software Engineering
SN - 972-8865-08-2
AU - Cherry S.
AU - N. Robillard P.
PY - 2004
SP - 116
EP - 125
DO - 10.5220/0002682701160125