Building a socio-technical theory of coordination: why and how (outstanding research award)

J. Herbsleb
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引用次数: 16

Abstract

Research aimed at understanding and addressing coordination breakdowns experienced in global software development (GSD) projects at Lucent Technologies took a path from open-ended qualitative exploratory studies to quantitative studies with a tight focus on a key problem – delay – and its causes. Rather than being directly associated with delay, multi-site work items involved more people than comparable same-site work items, and the number of people was a powerful predictor of delay. To counteract this, we developed and deployed tools and practices to support more effective communication and expertise location. After conducting two case studies of open source development, an extreme form of GSD, we realized that many tools and practices could be effective for multi-site work, but none seemed to work under all conditions. To achieve deeper insight, we developed and tested our Socio-Technical Theory of Coordination (STTC) in which the dependencies among engineering decisions are seen as defining a constraint satisfaction problem that the organization can solve in a variety of ways. I conclude by explaining how we applied these ideas to transparent development environments, then sketch important open research questions.
构建协调的社会技术理论:为什么和如何(杰出研究奖)
朗讯科技公司旨在理解和处理全球软件开发(GSD)项目中出现的协调故障的研究,从开放式的定性探索性研究转向了定量研究,重点关注一个关键问题——延迟——及其原因。与延迟直接相关的是,多地点工作项目比可比的同地点工作项目涉及更多的人,而人数是延迟的有力预测因素。为了解决这个问题,我们开发并部署了工具和实践,以支持更有效的沟通和专家定位。在对开源开发(GSD的一种极端形式)进行了两个案例研究之后,我们意识到许多工具和实践对于多站点工作是有效的,但是似乎没有一个可以在所有条件下工作。为了获得更深入的见解,我们开发并测试了我们的社会技术协调理论(STTC),其中工程决策之间的依赖关系被视为定义了组织可以通过各种方式解决的约束满足问题。最后,我解释了我们如何将这些想法应用于透明的开发环境,然后概述了重要的开放式研究问题。
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