Selective availability: Coordinating interaction initiation in distributed software development

The software industry is facing a recent trend called distributed software development (DSD), in which distributed teams require continuous support in their communication and coordination. However, there is a lack of communication tools that actually support the coordination of DSD activities. Current communication mechanisms appear to favour the issuer of an interaction, because the context of the receiver is not always considered. In this study, the authors introduce selective availability (SA), a mechanism with which to provide information about the current activities of the members in a distributed team, in order to motivate a more suitable means to initiate interactions, thus facilitating the communication and coordination of DSD activities. Moreover, the authors describe the CWS-IM tool, an extended instant messaging application that supports SA, by notifying collaborators about each of their colleague's activities. Therefore, issuers can decide whether the time is right to start the interaction. The results of an evaluation of the actual use of the tool in a DSD software development company are also presented. These results indicate that developers perceive CWS-IM to be more useful and easier to use than other traditional instant messaging applications when initiating collaboration in DSD environments.