{"title":"Factors Affecting Audio and Text-Based Communication Media Choice in Global Software Development Projects","authors":"Tuomas Niinimäki, A. Piri, C. Lassenius","doi":"10.1109/ICGSE.2009.23","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Software development as a knowledge intensive activity involves high requirements for communication and collaboration between its practitioners. In global software development, geographical, cultural and language distances bring additional challenges to communication. While text-based communication is very common in global software projects, recent improvements in telecommunications technology and network infrastructure have enabled ad-hoc audio conferencing as an economically feasible and available communication medium. Media richness theory suggests audio conferencing as a richer medium to have potential in leveraging uncertainty and equivocality, while media synchronicity theory suggests using multiple communication media to accomplish a task. This empirical qualitative study is based on 57 interviews from eight global software development projects. We discovered that self-conception of poor language skills leads to preference to use text-based communication media. We also found out that technical personnel tends to prefer text-based communication media more than non-technical team members.","PeriodicalId":137777,"journal":{"name":"2009 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering","volume":"94 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2009-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"42","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"2009 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2009.23","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 42
Abstract
Software development as a knowledge intensive activity involves high requirements for communication and collaboration between its practitioners. In global software development, geographical, cultural and language distances bring additional challenges to communication. While text-based communication is very common in global software projects, recent improvements in telecommunications technology and network infrastructure have enabled ad-hoc audio conferencing as an economically feasible and available communication medium. Media richness theory suggests audio conferencing as a richer medium to have potential in leveraging uncertainty and equivocality, while media synchronicity theory suggests using multiple communication media to accomplish a task. This empirical qualitative study is based on 57 interviews from eight global software development projects. We discovered that self-conception of poor language skills leads to preference to use text-based communication media. We also found out that technical personnel tends to prefer text-based communication media more than non-technical team members.