Building a socio-technical theory of coordination: why and how (outstanding research award)
Building a socio-technical theory of coordination: why and how (outstanding research award)
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DOI：
10.1145/2950290.2994160
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发表时间：
2016-11
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
J. Herbsleb
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Herbsleb
朗讯科技公司的研究旨在了解和解决全球软件开发（GSD）项目中遇到的协调故障，从开放式的定性探索性研究转向定量研究，重点关注一个关键问题-延迟及其原因。与延迟直接相关，多站点工作项目比可比的同站点工作项目涉及更多的人，并且人数是延迟的有力预测因素。为了应对这一问题，我们开发并部署了工具和实践，以支持更有效的沟通和专业知识定位。在进行了两个开源开发的案例研究（GSD的一种极端形式）之后，我们意识到许多工具和实践可以有效地用于多站点工作，但似乎没有一个在所有条件下都有效。为了实现更深入的洞察力，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一个约束满足问题，组织可以以各种方式解决。最后，我解释了我们如何将这些想法应用到透明的开发环境中，然后概述了重要的开放式研究问题。
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.