Similarly to co-located software engineering teams, teams in which developers work geographically distributed require a variety of information about the project, organization and team members to collaborate effectively. However, in such a setting, maintaining awareness at a sufficient level to colla

Just like in co-located teams, software engineers in distributed teams need a variety of information about the project and their team members to collaborate effectively. In contrast with the co-located situation however, acquiring and maintaining sufficient awareness is more difficult. Therefore technological support is developed to assist them with this. However, such support walks a fine line: if it provides too little information software engineers will not be able to collaborate effectively, yet if it provides too much, an information overload can occur. To further complicate matters, the information needs of software engineers dynamically change based on their current activity, context and focus. Therefore we assist tool developers by investigating and reporting on the prioritization of information for distributed software engineers based on their current activity and status. Finally, we illustrate the applicability of the findings by describing how to apply them in a support tool for distributed software engineers.

A Virtual office wall is a mechanism which automatically regulates information to support distributed software engineers. These walls reduce the available information to only that information which is currently relevant. In this paper we present a controlled experiment with experienced software engineers as study participants. In this experiment we study whether there is a relation between the presence of virtual office walls and the actual and perceived speed and accuracy of the work carried out by the participants. Additionally, we measured the extent in which the participants experience the presence of virtual office walls as useful. The main findings include that virtual office walls appear to contribute to an improved awareness of co-worker synchronicity, an easier insight in what to do and a more concise overview of the work performed. These improvements mostly benefit the speed of coordination and the perception regarding overall performance.

Distributed teams face the challenge of staying connected. How do team members stay connected when they no longer see each other on a daily basis? What should be done when there is no coffee corner to share your latest exploits? In this paper we evaluate a microblogging system which makes this possible in a distributed setting. The system, WeHomer, enables the sharing of information and corresponding emotions in a fully distributed organization. We analyzed the content of over a year of usage data by 19 team members in a structured fashion, performed 5 semi-structured interviews and report our findings in this paper. We draw conclusions about the topics shared, the impact on software teams and the impact of distribution and team composition. Main findings include an increase in team-connectedness and easier access to information that is traditionally harder to consistently acquire.

Much work has been done in developing Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) for supporting software engineers in their isolated programming tasks. Software Engineering however, is primarily a collaborative activity in which communication, coordination and cooperation with colleagues is essentia

Collaborative Software Engineering is increasingly carried out from multiple, physically separated, locations around the globe. Software engineers are no longer tied to a fixed workplace and have the opportunity to work from the location of the customer, their home and even from their holiday locati

Software engineering is by nature a highly collaborative activity. However, collaborating effectively in Global Software Engineering, in which team members are geographically, temporally and/or socio-culturally separated from each other, is more difficult. In a traditional co-located setting, one of the most important communication patterns is a (face-to-face) conversation. Technological solutions to have conversations in a distributed setting are commonly used, however overhearing conversations of others is not explicitly supported. In this paper we report on the evaluation of supporting overhearing conversations with technology in a distributed industrial setting. To do this we deployed a tool we developed with which it is possible to overhear Instant Messaging conversations in an international software development company. Based on this evaluation we report lessons learned and conclude with the most important findings of this study.

Conversations between colleagues in collaborative software engineering are important for coordinating work, sharing knowledge and creating knowledge. Overhearing conversations of others is useful as well since this: (i) provides access to the information discussed in the conversations, (ii) offers t

Software engineering is by nature a highly collaborative activity and being able to collaborate effectively is a key factor for project success. However, collaborating effectively in Global Software Engineering, in which team members are geographically, temporally and socio-culturally separated from

This extended abstract accompanies our submission to the video track of the conference. We briefly introduce Communico, a tool which enables the overhearing of conversations in a distributed setting and describe how it fits the CSCW literature and audience.

When preparing students for an industrial or academic career in software engineering, educational institutions need to address the globally distributed character of the software engineering profession. As it will be difficult to have students actually participating in a real-life, multi-site, globally dispersed, industrial project and thus acquiring knowledge from experience, there is a challenge to properly prepare students for their future jobs. One way to teach the dynamics of global development is by letting students participate in a game in which these dynamics are primarily addressed. In this paper a board game is presented that can be used for such a purpose. The paper presents a description of the game and the findings from a controlled experiment to explore its learning effects.

Conversations between colleagues in collaborative software engineering are important for coordinating work, sharing knowledge and creating knowledge. Overhearing conversations of others is useful as well since this: (i) provides access to the information discussed in the conversations, (ii) offers the possibility of joining the conversations and (iii) provides insight in the communication structure of the project team. When working in a GSE setting, specialized tooling is required to be able to have conversations and to know what conversations others are having. In this paper we discuss how conversations support collaborative software engineering and how this can be supported by technology in a GSE environment. To do this, we introduce Communico: a virtual open conversation space which features: (i) initiating conversations by selecting people to converse with, (ii) sharing information regarding the involvement of project members in these conversations and (iii) having access to persistent conversations with an explicit status indicating whether they are ongoing.

Research the problems caused by the difficulties in GSE with acquiring and maintaining awareness: sufficient contextual information to be able to properly cooperate with others.

Because of the distance between the dispersed development locations, global software engineering (GSE) is confronted with challenges regarding communication, coordination and control of the development work. At the same time, agile software development is strongly built upon communication between engineers and has proven its benefits, although, mostly on one single site. As such, it might be advantageous to combine GSE with agile development. This blend however is not straightforward since the distributed and agile development approaches might have conflicting convictions. In this paper we will discuss the advantages and challenges of combining GSE with agile development based on a theoretical, literature-based research. The main results presented in this paper are: (i) aspects of agile software development, (ii) benefits and challenges associated with these in relation to GSE, (iii) categories of technological support for agile GSE and (iv) a framework depicting the mutual relations among them.