Sabrina Marczak

Globally distributed system developers: their trust expectations and processes

Trust remains a challenge in globally distributed development teams. In order to investigate how trust plays out in this context, we conducted a qualitative study of 5 multi-national IT organizations. We interviewed 58 individuals across 10 countries and made two principal findings. First, study participants described trust in terms of their expectations of their colleagues. These expectations fell into one of three dimensions: that socially correct behavior will persist, that team members possess technical competency, and that individuals will demonstrate concern for others. Second, our study participants described trust as a dynamic process, with phases including formation, dissolution, adjustment and restoration. We provide new insights into these dimensions and phases of trust within distributed teams which extend existing literature. Our study also provides guidelines on effective practices within distributed teams in addition to providing implications for the extension of software engineering and collaboration tools.

Problems? We All Know We Have Them. Do We Have Solutions Too? A Literature Review on Problems and Their Solutions in Global Software Development

Distribution of development processes has become common as a side effect of globalization. Working in a distributed setting brings challenges inherent to distance. The Software Engineering community has been investigating these challenges for over a decade, and issues regarding communication, coordination, and trust are frequently reported in literature. However, a few studies discuss solutions for these challenges. Frequently, best practices are described in a general context. In this paper we report our findings from a systematic literature review that aimed at identifying reported challenges and the proposed solutions to solve such challenges. In a time that distributed development has established its roots, it is important to move towards solutions to well-known problems. Our report aims to establish a baseline of problems that still need solutions. This baseline brings awareness to the global software engineering community. We finish discussing the implications for furthering the body of knowledge in the field.

Towards a GSE international teaching network: mapping global software engineering courses

Teaching Global Software Engineering is challenging since it is not trivial to simulate distance and the changes that distance brings into the traditional software development life cycle. Despite the challenge, the need to teach undergrad and graduate students the skills to work in such environment is well-known in academia. The goal of this paper is two-folded. First, we identify what has been thought, by whom and to whom by conducting a literature review. This review aims to consolidate the body of knowledge on the topic in order to help professors and professionals interested in teaching the subject. For instance, we found that 19 courses have been reported involving 25 countries in total since 1997. Most of the courses involves graduate students as the main audience, and mainly discuss challenges in distributed development. Our second goal is to propose the creation of a collaborative repository to store and to report teaching experiences on the topic helping the development and strengthening of the Teaching Network community.

The role of domain knowledge and cross-functional communication in socio-technical coordination

Software projects involve diverse roles and artifacts that have dependencies to requirements. Project team members in different roles need to coordinate but their coordination is affected by the availability of domain knowledge, which is distributed among different project members, and organizational structures that control cross-functional communication. Our study examines how information flowed between different roles in two software projects that had contrasting distributions of domain knowledge and different communication structures. Using observations, interviews, and surveys, we examined how diverse roles working on requirements and their related artifacts coordinated along task dependencies. We found that communication only partially matched task dependencies and that team members that are boundary spanners have extensive domain knowledge and hold key positions in the control structure. These findings have implications on how organizational structures interfere with task assignments and influence communication in the project, suggesting how practitioners can adjust team configuration and communication structures.

PDS-E: Em direção a um processo para desenvolvimento de Software Educacional

Webgrade is an on-line system for managing and publishing student grades on web. Webgrade provides: (1) to the teachers, features for managing grade plans, publishing student grades, and sending messages to the students by email; (2) to the students, access to their grades and number of absences to the classes, in a private and restrict page on the internet. All interactions between Webgrade and users are done by a web browser. Webgrade was developed with open-source technology and can be freely distributed under GPL.Resumo: Este artigo relata uma experiencia de inclusao digital (ID) do Programa de Extensao Onda Digital com 40 jovens carentes. O curso de Informatica Basica de 36 horas fez parte do programa educacional da ONG Eletrocooperativa. Este programa visa a formacao musical, melhoria das condicoes de trabalho e de cidadania de jovens afro-descendentes brasileiros. A experiencia de ID contou com a participacao de alunos do curso de graduacao em Ciencia da Computacao da UFBA, que atuaram como instrutores. O gerenciamento do curso, a elaboracao das aulas e do material didatico foram feitos com a utilizacao de ferramentas colaborativas livres. O proprio conteudo do curso de informatica foi baseado em solucoes livres, dentro do sistema operacional GNU/Linux. O resultado foi encorajador: dos 22 alunos que concluiram o curso com sucesso, 13 ja estao empregados em menos de 6 meses e 2 decidiram matricular-se em curso pre-vestibular. Acreditamos que iniciativas como esta despertam nos jovens a motivacao de engajar-se na universidade ou no mercado de trabalho. Abstract: This paper describes a digital inclusion (DI) experience of the OndaDigital Extension Program with 40 deprived teenagers. The IntroductoryInformatics Course had a total of 36 hours and was part of the EducationalProgram from the NGO Eletrocooperativa. Their program focuses on musicalformation, improvement of work condition and citizenship of afro-descendantsBrazilian youngsters. This DI experience counted with the participation ofstudents from the Computer Science undergraduate course of UFBA asmonitors and instructors. The management of the course, preparation oflessons and pedagogical material was done using a collaborative tool basedon free software. The course content was also based on free softwareapplications using GNU/Linux operating system. The results were veryencouraging: from the 22 students that successfully finished the course, 13found a job in less than six months and 2 decided to take preparatory coursesfor entering university. We believe that initiatives like this one motivateteenagers to aim for the university or enter the job market.

Context-based search engine for industrial IoT: Discovery, search, selection, and usage of devices

During the past few years, with the fast development and proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), many application areas have started to exploit this new computing paradigm. An interesting use of IoT is in the Industrial field, which has resulted in a new business concept called IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things). Another important fact is the number of active computing devices has been growing at a rapid pace in IoT environments around the world. Consequently, a mechanism to deal with this different devices has become necessary. Middleware systems solutions for IoT have been developed in both research and industrial environments to supply this need. However, discover, search, select, and interact with devices remain a critical challenge. In this paper we present COBASEN, a software framework composed of a Context Module and a Search Engine to address the research challenge regarding the discovery and interaction with IoT devices when large number of devices with overlapping and sometimes redundant functionality are available in IoT middleware systems. The search engine of the COBASEN operates based on the semantic characteristics of the devices, which is provided by the context module, and that helps users in their interactions with desired devices. The main goal of this work is to highlight the importance of a context-based search engine in the IoT paradigm and to provide a solution that addresses the proper management of search and usage in IoT middleware environments. We developed a tool that implements all COBASEN concepts. However, for preliminarily tests, we made a functional evaluation of the search engine in terms of performance for indexing and querying response time. Our initial findings suggest that COBASEN provides important approaches that facilitate the development of IIoT applications, which based on the COBASEN systems support, may perform essential roles to improve industrial processes.

An Ontology for Task Allocation to Teams in Distributed Software Development

An adequate task allocation plan is an effective strategy to reduce collaboration issues in distributed software development. Practitioners adopt distinct processes to allocate tasks as well as diverse labels for the same activities and artifacts. This diversity is also found in literature. Task allocation proposals consider different elements and use distinct names for the same concepts. The lack of a standardized vocabulary and of an understanding of the elements involved impairs knowledge acquisition and sharing. Our paper presents a domain ontology to represent concepts related to task allocation in distributed teams. The ontology was defined based on a literature systematic mapping and on the opinion of experts. Preliminary evaluation suggests that the relationships among concepts are valid in real projects. The ontology brings awareness to managers regarding the factors related to task allocation planning and provides researchers with a framework to define processes and design tools to support such activity.

Trust in virtual teams: theory and tools

We present a workshop in which trust in virtual teams is the central theme. Trust is essential for effective and efficient collaborations to take place and is more challenging when people are unable to meet face-to-face. The workshop aims to generate discussions which address three key issues within this general theme: 1) the factors that engender and inhibit trust, 2) the structure of a trust framework, 3) and the requirements for software tools that support the development of trust during virtual collaborations.

Studying relevant socio-technical aspects of requirements-driven collaboration in agile teams

Requirements engineering requires intensive collaboration among team members. Agile methods also require constant collaboration among those involved in the project. While working on certain interdependent tasks, team members develop social and technical relationships that instigate socio-technical dependencies. The main goal of our research is to investigate socio-technical aspects that underlie requirements-driven collaboration among agile teams and their influence on project performance. In this paper we present our research approach to achieve such goal and briefly report on preliminary findings. A survey revealed that communication and awareness are the most relevant socio-technical aspects that underlie requirements-driven collaboration in agile teams. Initial findings of a case study aiming to identify requirements-driven collaboration patterns suggest that teams well aware of each other have lesser communication gaps and require lesser rework. Findings will contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between collaboration and performance in agile teams.

Technologies to Support Collaboration across Time Zones

Time zone differences are a challenge to global software engineering. This column surveys the key technologies and tools that support collaboration across time zones. The insights on technologies derive from a meta- analysis of the 2010 and 2011 IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), among others.