We discuss findings from an ethnographic study of instant messaging (IM) in the workplace and its implications for media theory. We describe how instant messaging supports a variety of informal communication tasks. We document the affordances of IM that support flexible, expressive communication. We describe some unexpected uses of IM that highlight aspects of communication which are not part of current media theorizing. They pertain to communicative processes people use to connect with each other and to manage communication, rather than to information exchange. We call these processes "outeraction." We discuss how outeractional aspects of communication affect media choice and patterns of media use. Keywords Instant messaging, media theory, informal communication, computer-mediated communication, outeraction. INTRODUCTION Recent empirical work has shown the importance of informal workplace communication for effective collaboration. By informal we mean interactions that are generall...

It is widely acknowledged that coordination of large scale software development is an extremely difficult and persistent problem. Since the structure of the code mirrors the structure of the organization, one might expect that splitting the organization across time zones, cultures, and (natural) languages would make it difficult to assemble the components. This paper presents a case study of what indeed turned out to be the most difficult part of a geographically distributed software project, i.e., integration. Coordination problems were greatly exaggerated across sites, largely because of the breakdown of informal communication channels. The results imply that multi-site development can benefit to some extent ti-om stable plans, processes, and specifications. The inherently unpredictable aspects of projects, however, require communication channels that can be invoked spontaneously, by developers, as needed. These results shed light on the problems and mechanisms underlying the coordination needs of development projects generally, be they co-located or distributed.

Global software development is rapidly becoming the norm for technology companies. Previous qualitative research suggests that multi-site development may increase development cycle time. We use both survey data and data from the source code change management system to model the extent of delay in a multi-site software development organization, and explore several possible mechanisms for this delay. We also measure differences in same-site and cross-site communication patterns, and analyze the relationship of these variables to delay. Our results show that compared to same-site work, cross-site work takes much longer, and requires more people for work of equal size and complexity. We also report a strong relationship between delay in cross-site work and the degree to which remote colleagues are perceived to help out when workloads are heavy. We discuss implications of our findings for collaboration technology for distributed software development.

Current perceptions of Instant Messaging (IM) use are based primarily on self-report studies. We logged thousands of (mostly) workplace IM conversations and evaluated their conversational characteristics and functions. Contrary to prior research, we found that the primary use of workplace IM was for complex work discussions. Only 28% of conversations were simple, single-purpose interactions and only 31% were about scheduling or coordination. Moreover, people rarely switched from IM to another medium when the conversation got complex. We found evidence of two distinct styles of use. Heavy IM users and frequent IM partners mainly used it to work together: to discuss a broad range of topics via many fast-paced interactions per day, each with many short turns and much threading and multitasking. Light users and infrequent pairs mainly used IM to coordinate: for scheduling, via fewer conversations per day that were shorter, slower-paced with less threading and multitasking.

There have been many attempts to support awareness and lightweight interactions using video and audio, but few have been built on widely available infrastructure. Text-based systems have become more popular, but few support awareness, opportunistic conversations, and mobility, three important elements of helping distributed groups coordinate. We built on the popularity of text-based Instant Messengers (IM) by building a mobile IM called Hubbub that tries to provide all three, notably through the use of musical sounds. In a 5.5-month use study, we found that Hubbub helped people feel connected to others in different locations and supported opportunistic interactions. Sound was a useful cue for helping people feel connected, although some found it annoying. It was more important to support graceful transitions between multiple fixed locations than to support wireless access, although both were useful.

Our main goal is to review the problems, solutions, and open issues in global software development (GSD), in which the software development activities are distributed across multiple sites. First we introduce the reasons why GSD is becoming more and more prevalent. Then we outline the issues created or amplified by GSD and illustrate various effects it has on a software project. Finally, we summarize the literature on existing approaches to reduce the negative effects of GSD, and list key open research questions. Most major companies develop software products in a globally distributed fashion. For example, in year 2000, 185 of Fortune 500 companies outsourced software development to India alone and the amount of outsourcing grew at a 53%

Collaborations over distance must contend with the loss of the rich, subtle interactions that co-located teams use to coordinate their work. Previous research has suggested that one consequence of this loss is that cross-site work will take longer than comparable single-site work. We use both survey data and data from the change management system to measure the extent of delay in a multi-site software development organization. We also measure site interdependence, differences in same-site and cross-site communication patterns, and analyze the relationship of these variables to delay. Our results show a significant relationship between delay in cross-site work and the degree to which remote colleagues are perceived to help out when workloads are heavy. This result is particularly troubling in light of the finding that workers generally believed they were as helpful to their remote colleagues as to their local colleagues. We discuss implications of our findings for collaboration technology for distributed organizations.

Task dependencies drive the need to coordinate work activities. We describe a technique for using automatically generated archival data to compute coordination requirements, i.e., who must coordinate with whom to get the work done. Analysis of data from a large software development project revealed that coordination requirements were highly volatile, and frequently extended beyond team boundaries. Congruence between coordination requirements and coordination activities shortened development time. Developers, particularly the most productive ones, changed their use of electronic communication media over time, achieving higher congruence. We discuss practical implications of our technique for the design of collaborative and awareness tools. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Groups and Organization Interfaces – collaborative computing, computersupported

Abstract—Global software development is rapidly becoming the norm for technology companies. Previous qualitative research suggests that distributed development may increase development cycle time for individual work items (modification requests). We use both data from the source code change management system and survey data to model the extent of delay in a distributed software development organization and explore several possible mechanisms for this delay. One key finding is that distributed work items appear to take about two and one-half times as long to complete as similar items where all the work is colocated. The data strongly suggest a mechanism for the delay, i.e., that distributed work items involve more people than comparable same-site work items, and the number of people involved is strongly related to the calendar time to complete a work item. We replicate the analysis of change data in a different organization with a different product and different sites and confirm our main findings. We also report survey results showing differences between same-site and distributed social networks, testing several hypotheses about characteristics of distributed social networks that may be related to delay. We discuss implications of our findings for practices and collaboration technology that have the potential for dramatically speeding distributed software development. Index Terms—Global development, collaboration, delay, speed, awareness, informal communication. 1

Scientific and engineering research increasingly involves multidisciplinary collaboration, sometimes across multiple organizations. Technological advances have made such crossboundary projects possible, yet they can carry high coordination costs. This study investigated scientific collaboration across disciplinary and university boundaries to understand the need for coordination in these collaborations and how different levels of coordination predicted success. We conducted a study of 62 scientific collaborations supported by a program of the United States National Science Foundation in 1998 and 1999. Projects with principal investigators (PIs) in more disciplines reported as many positive outcomes as did projects involving fewer disciplines. By contrast, multi-university, rather than multidisciplinary, projects were problematic. Projects with PIs from more universities were significantly less well coordinated and reported fewer positive outcomes than projects with PIs from fewer unive...