Distributing and Coordinating Work in Global Software Development

Speaker
Jim Herbsleb
Associate Professor, Institute for Software Research International, Carnegie Mellon University

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

I will report on our experiences of introducing an instant messaging and group chat application into geographically distributed workgroups. I describe a number of issues we encountered, including privacy concerns, individual versus group training, and focusing on teams or individuals. The perception of the tools utility was a complex issue, depending both on users views of the importance of informal communication, and their perceptions of the nature of cross-site communication issues. An analysis of use shows that the group functionality was used primarily for bursts of synchronous conversations and occasional asynchronous exchanges. The content was primarily focused on work tasks, and negotiating availability, with a smattering of non-work topics and humor. Nearly all groups were remarkably similar in the content of their group chat, although the research group chatted far more frequently than the others. I conclude with a discussion of open research questions, including: 1) critical mass; we encountered a dilemma that imposes serious challenges for user-centered design of groupware systems, and 2) important features and evolution of team-oriented synchronous messaging tools in the workplace.

Speaker's Bio

James D. Herbsleb is an associate professor in the Institute for Software Research, International, in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Since 1996, he was a member of the Software Production Research Department, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. He led the Bell Labs Collaboratory project since its kickoff in 1998, addressing issues of geographically distributed software development and designing collaborative applications and services. He holds an M.S. in computer science from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in psychology from University of Nebraska. He has held positions as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, and a senior member of the technical staff of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. For the past 12 years, he has conducted research and published in the areas of collaborative software engineering, human-computer interaction, and computer supported cooperative work. For the last three years, his work has focused on collaboration technology and processes to support large globally distributed software development projects.

Speaker's Website
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jdh/