Cooperation and coordination concerns in a distributed software development project

Abstract

Enabling effective coordination of work in large distributed software projects requires cooperation between participants across multiple teams, sites, and skill sets. To determine how practicing software engineers, in a distributed software development setting, maintain awareness of dependencies and coordinate to resolve dependencies in their work, we conducted a field study that used interviews and informal observation of a distributed software team. In this paper we present key interesting themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis: proximity, modification request authoring patterns, and uncooperative behaviours. We discuss these findings and outline future quantitative research plans to triangulate the methods used by software developers with recorded activities in engineering repositories to increase the generalizability of the research findings.