Authors:
Sherlock A. Licorish
and
Stephen G. MacDonell
Affiliation:
Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Keyword(s):
Software Development, Psycholinguistics, Jazz, Self-organising Roles, Attitudes and Competencies.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Agile Methodologies
;
Cross-Feeding between Data and Software Engineering
;
Geographically Distributed Software Development Environments
;
Service-Oriented Software Engineering and Management
;
Software and Systems Development Methodologies
;
Software Engineering
;
Software Process Improvement
;
Software Project Management
Abstract:
Agile software developers are required to self-organize, occupying various informal roles as needed in order to successfully deliver software features. However, previous research has reported conflicting evidence about the way teams actually undertake this activity. The ability to self-organize is particularly necessary for software development in globally distributed environments, where distance has been shown to exacerbate human-centric issues. Understanding the way successful teams self-organise should inform distributed team composition strategies and software project governance. We have used psycholinguistics to study the way IBM Rational Jazz practitioners enacted various roles, expressed attitudes and shared competencies to successfully self-organize in their global projects. Among our findings, we uncovered that practitioners enacted various roles depending on their teams’ cohort of features; and that team leaders were most critical to IBM Jazz teams’ self-organisation. We di
scuss these findings and highlight their implications for software project governance.
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