Exploring Propinquity in Global Software Engineering

Abstract

In social psychology, propinquity refers to the physical (objective) or psychological (subjective) proximity between people. In this paper, we explore the psychological dimension of propinquity, by examining the phenomenon of feeling distant from geographically distributed people, in the context of distributed software teams. The lack of perceived distance is an important challenge faced by distributed teams, and it is frequently caused by factors beyond the physical distance, such as communication and cultural differences. The purpose of this paper is to propose and evaluate the usage of an innovative model to quantitatively evaluate the perceived distance in this context. The model was applied in a software development project with teams located in India and Brazil, and feedback was given by experts in the field. We present the model, details of its applications, analysis of the results, lessons learned, and practical implications for the management of distributed software projects and teams.