CHS: Small: Supporting Stigmergic Coordination

CHS：小：支持 Stigmergic 协调

• 批准号: 1618444
• 负责人: Kevin Crowston
• 金额: $ 49.99万
• 依托单位: Syracuse University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-01 至 2021-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1618444&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CHS; Small; Supporting; Stigmergic; Coordination

This award supports development of theory and tools to improve the coordination of distributed teams, i.e., groups of geographically-dispersed individuals working together over time towards a common goal. The separation of distributed work generally makes it harder for team members to work together effectively. However, when work products are shared via a computer system, team participants can see the work produced by remote colleagues as easily as from those who are local, and the work can provide information to support team coordination. Specifically, prior research suggests that free/libre open source software (FLOSS) developers use the software code they are developing as a basis for coordinating their work, a phenomenon known as stigmergic coordination. Stigmergic coordination can be more effective and efficient than coordination through explicit discussion, so there could be benefits if it can be used more broadly. The goal of the project is to study FLOSS developers to understand how stigmergic coordination works and to develop a system to enable its use in other settings. To achieve these goals, this study will be done in two phases: first identifying the socio-technical affordance enabling stigmergic coordination in FLOSS development teams (as exemplars of distributed teams) and similar settings, and second, testing the emerging theoretical understanding by implementing and assessing a system to support stigmergic coordination of distributed work in a new domain. The study will have several expected intellectual contributions. First, the empirical study should provide evidence for (or possibly against) stigmergic coordination as a mode of coordination in distributed work. As well, the study will identify possible negative outcomes from the use of stigmergy. More importantly, the study will identify socio-technical affordances that enable the use of stigmergy. Knowing these affordances will provide a basis for designing shared-work systems that support stigmergy. They will also help in understanding the possibilities and limits on the transfer of coordination mechanisms from open content creation teams to other domains. The study will have several broader impacts. First, being able to implement a novel mode of coordination could be transformative for the conduct of online work and computer-supported work more generally. Second, if it seems that reliance on stigmergy is off-putting for certain potential group participants (women in particular), then the project can study how that happens and potentially mitigate the huge gender gap currently observed in FLOSS development participation in particular and in online groups more generally. The software system to be developed will be released as open source for use in future research (thus contributing to the infrastructure for research) and potentially for use by distributed workers (thus potentially benefiting society).

该奖项支持理论和工具的发展，以改善分布式团队的协调，即，一群地理上分散的人，为了一个共同的目标而长期合作。分布式工作的分离通常会使团队成员更难有效地协同工作。然而，当工作产品通过计算机系统共享时，团队参与者可以像从本地同事那里一样容易地看到远程同事所做的工作，并且工作可以提供信息来支持团队协调。具体来说，先前的研究表明，自由/自由开放源码软件（FLOSS）开发人员使用他们正在开发的软件代码作为协调工作的基础，这种现象被称为stigmergic协调。污名化协调比通过明确讨论进行的协调更有效力和效率，因此，如果能够更广泛地使用污名化协调，可能会有好处。该项目的目标是研究FLOSS开发人员，以了解stigmergic协调如何工作，并开发一个系统，使其能够在其他环境中使用。为了实现这些目标，本研究将分两个阶段进行：第一，确定社会技术的启示，使stigmergic协调在FLOSS开发团队（作为分布式团队的典范）和类似的设置，第二，测试新兴的理论理解，通过实施和评估一个系统，以支持stigmergic协调分布式工作在一个新的领域。这项研究将有几个预期的知识贡献。首先，实证研究应提供证据（或可能反对）的污名协调作为一种模式的协调在分布式工作。此外，这项研究将确定使用污名可能产生的负面后果。更重要的是，这项研究将确定社会技术的可供性，使污名的使用。了解这些启示将为设计支持污名化的共享工作系统提供基础。它们还将有助于理解将协调机制从开放内容创作团队转移到其他领域的可能性和限制。这项研究将产生几个更广泛的影响。首先，能够实施一种新的协调模式，对于更普遍的在线工作和计算机支持的工作的开展可能具有变革性。第二，如果依赖污名似乎会让某些潜在的群体参与者（特别是女性）感到不快，那么该项目可以研究这种情况是如何发生的，并有可能减轻目前在FLOSS发展参与和更普遍的在线群体中观察到的巨大性别差距。待开发的软件系统将作为开放源代码发布，用于未来的研究（从而有助于研究基础设施），并可能供分布式工作人员使用（从而可能造福社会）。

项目成果

MIDST: an enhanced development environment that improves the maintainability of a data science analysis

• DOI: 10.12821/ijispm080301
• 发表时间: 2021-09
• 期刊: International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management
• 作者: J. Saltz;Kevin Crowston;Robert Heckman;Yatish Hegde

GitLab: work where you want, when you want

• DOI: 10.1186/s41469-020-00087-8
• 发表时间: 2020-11-16
• 期刊: Journal of Organization Design
• 作者: Choudhury P;Crowston K;Dahlander L;Minervini MS;Raghuram S
• 通讯作者: Raghuram S

Effects of Stigmergic and Explicit Coordination on Wikipedia Article Quality

耻辱和显式协调对维基百科文章质量的影响

• DOI: 10.24251/hicss.2020.287
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
• 作者: Crowston, Kevin;Rezgui, Amira
• 通讯作者: Rezgui, Amira