Despite the current trend towards global software development, many software enterprises lack effective media for communication and collaboration. Moreover, social media are gaining attraction especially in private settings but are largely neglected in the context of distributed software development. Therefore, the goal of this design-oriented research endeavor is to develop a methodology and a corresponding tool to support communication, collaboration, and traceability in global software development. In order to address this goal, a microblogging tool is being adapted to the specific needs of developers working in distributed settings.
Global software development (GSD) is gaining increasing attraction. Major drivers for
this trend are gains in flexibility, expected cost savings, or faster development cycles
due to round-the-clock development [
Another trend of the last decade is the growth of Social Media in private as well
as enterprise settings. Despite the fact that these media bear high potentials especially
for GSD, the role of social media usage in software engineering is not well understood
[
In order to support GSD, this design-oriented research endeavor aims at the following objectives: 1. To develop a methodology to enhance awareness, communication, collaboration, and traceability in global software development and 2. to design a software tool that supports this methodology.
The remainder of this research proposal is structured as follows: the underlying foundations are presented in the next section, followed by a review of prior research, the deduction of the proposed approach, and the presentation of the research methodology in Section 3. Finally, Section 4 concludes the proposal. 2 2.1
Enterprises increasingly create software in so-called virtual teams that are
“internationally distributed groups of people with an organizational mandate to make or implement
decisions with international components and implications” [7, p. 473]. This enables
people to work collectively on interdependent tasks without being in the same
organization or at the same place, not even in the same time zone [
Today, not only large enterprises engage in GSD; it is gaining attraction even for
small and medium sized enterprises [
Some of these problems can be contained by maintaining traceability of the whole
development project [
Since the last decade, Social Media have been used to a greater extent in all aspects
of life. However, there is no clear definition for the term Social Media in research
until now. Most definitions agree on the aspect that Social Media involve user-generated
content. These users are part of an online community based upon a service or a
product [
In GSD, Social Media can be used to support communication [
This research endeavor aims at integrating microblogging into the working environment
of developers. The idea of integrating communication media into an integrated
development envoronment (IDE) is not entirely new. For instance, Fitzpatrick et al. developed
an event notification system that integrates the Concurrent Version System (CVS) and
chat functionalities with the goal to increase awareness, coordination, and
communication [
Handel et al. introduced instant messaging capabilities into development
environments in order to increase awareness [
More recently, research on the use of social media and microblogging in software
development emerged. For instance, Storey et al. discussed the use of social media in
software development [
Reinhardt presents an approach that integrates microblogging features into an IDE
[
Guzzi et al. implemented a tool that integrates a microblogging-like environment
into the Eclipse IDE in order to aid software developers in understanding and
documenting the development progress [
Apart from academic efforts, a couple of tools that integrate Twitter into the Eclipse IDE emerged, as, for instance, Tweethub3, Twitclipse4, Twikle5, and Twitterclipse6. All these tools provide Twitter user interfaces that are integrated into the Eclipse IDE. A different approach is realized by the Snipper tool7. This tool is intended to let developers share code snippets via Twitter.
All tools mentioned generally focus on displaying microblogs and provide the
ability to send messages to Twitter accounts. They lack the ability to support TRM as it is
intended in this research endeavor (by linking messages with source files they relate to,
for instance) and are not integrated into an enterprise environment. Additionally, none
of these approaches has been evaluated in an appropriate way in order to prove its
usefulness. Nevertheless, it is obvious that microblogging integration is gaining attraction
in the software development community. However, no current tool or collaborative
development environment supports all the activities for global software engineering [
The steps of this research endeavor are briefly summarized in Table 1. As a first step,
case studies with eight small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) that work in
globally distributed settings have been conducted [
As a second step, requirements for such an approach were deduced from Media
Synchronicity Theory (MST) [
Theoretical deduction of Deduction of requirements from media synchronicity theory Done requirements and the concept of social capital. Assessment of social media and communication media regarding these requirements. Decision to concentrate on microblogging.
Prove of relevance for Case study to prove relevance for practice of the theoretically In practice deduced requirements. progress Market research Decision to use Eclipse and status.net. Done Development of the Development of guidelines that support communication and In methodology collaboration of developers in distributed settings and that al- progress lows them to realize TRM in a simple way.
Adaption of a web appli- Familiarization with status.net, configuration, and implemen- In cation tation of add-ons. progress Development of an IDE Development of a plug-in for Eclipse that supports microblog- Planned plug-in ging on the one hand and facilitates better traceability on the other hand.
Evaluation Evaluation of the approach in an experimental setting in a stu- Planned dent project with experimental and control group. – Informal communication in terms of (1) communication that is not directly work related as this aims at creating team building and trust and in terms of (2) the informal character of the messages as this encourages non-native speakers to communicate in the project language should be supported. – Synchronous communication should be enabled but not be enforced. – Awareness of team members should be enhanced. – Team members should be enabled to maintain and use existing as well as “indirect” SC by stimulating their awareness of each other. Indirect SC is the SC of ones contacts, for instance. – Connecting different actors should be facilitated. – The approach should be lightweight and straightforward to use. Thus, appropriate solutions should be integrated into the usual working environment of the users.
Additionally, the following requirements were derived from software engineering practice: – Users should be able to document any changes and discussions in a simple way.
Thus, TRM should be supported. – The solution should fit to enterprise settings. Public solutions like Twitter, for instance, should not be used in an enterprise context, due to security issues.
These theoretically deduced and conceptually derived requirements are being proved
for practice relevance in an intermediary step. An assessment of communication media
and social media regarding these requirements has led to the decision to concentrate on
microblogging to support GSD, especially since microblogging supports synchronous
as well as asynchronous communication and provides an easy means for the
enhancement of users’ awareness of each other [
Besides the development of a methodology and the adaption of a web application, it is planned to develop a plug-in for an IDE. This plug-in is intended to be integrated into the common working environment of developers. Additionally, the plug-in should allow for connecting discussions via the microblogging tool directly with the part of the code they are related to in order to support TRM.
As a third step, extensive market research led to the decision to use the Eclipse IDE8 and the microblogging-tool status.net9. The market research for social media comprised 71 tools in total. All of them have been analyzed regarding their license model and functionality. The status.net tool already provides a lot of necessary functions for the web application and is available under a creative commons attribution license and, therefore, fulfilled the requirements best. Eclipse was chosen due to its license model and its widespread use in the software development community.
The fourth step is the development of the methodology, followed by the adaption of status.net and the development of the Eclipse plug-in. Until now, the development phase of the methodology and the web application has started. The next steps will be to finish development on these tasks and to develop the Eclipse plug-in. Finally, the approach will be evaluated regarding usefulness and effectiveness in an experimental setting, i.e., in a student’s project with control group and experimental group.
By creating and evaluating an IT artifact, this research endeavor follows a
designscience approach [
Using microblogging to support awareness, communication, collaboration, and TRM is a promising approach for tackling ongoing problems in GSD that needs further academic advice. A step into this direction is provided by this research endeavor that aims at integrating microblogging into a development environment. Herewith, awareness between distributed team members will be enhanced, team members will be able to exchange their knowledge on urgent tasks in an easy and informal way, and traceability of software development projects will be supported.
This doctoral research is being supervised by Prof. Armin Heinzl and is supported by the German state of Baden-Wu¨rttemberg within the research project “GlobaliSE”. 8 http://www.eclipse.org (03/15/11) 9 http://status.net (03/15/11)