It's About Time: Applying Temporality to Software Development Teams

Abstract

Most existing software development research adopts a very simplistic, 'clock-based' mechanistic interpretation of time and ignores the highly complex, multi-faceted, subtle and socially embedded nature of temporality. This is a significant limitation given that software development is a highly complex, socially embedded activity. This research applies temporality theory to examine software development teams. This research contributes to research and practice by (i) identifying any gaps, misconceptions or general conceptual issues in the application of temporal concepts to software development to date, (ii) examining the complexity of temporality that exist within software development teams (iii) examining the impact that such complexity may have, and (iv) identify strategies for resolving these temporality issues in software development. To achieve the objective of this study, the comprehensive temporality framework proposed by Ancona et al., (2001) is used to understand the various components of temporality within the context of software development.