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Group Awareness in Distributed Software Development
- In CSCW ’04: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
, 2004
"... carl.gutwin, reagan.penner, kevin.schneider @ usask.ca Open-source software development projects are almost always collaborative and distributed. Despite the difficulties imposed by distance, these projects have managed to produce large, complex, and successful systems. However, there is still littl ..."
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carl.gutwin, reagan.penner, kevin.schneider @ usask.ca Open-source software development projects are almost always collaborative and distributed. Despite the difficulties imposed by distance, these projects have managed to produce large, complex, and successful systems. However, there is still little known about how open-source teams manage their collaboration. In this paper we look at one aspect of this issue: how distributed developers maintain group awareness. We interviewed developers, read project communication, and looked at project artifacts from three successful open source projects. We found that distributed developers do need to maintain awareness of one another, and that they maintain both a general awareness of the entire team and more detailed knowledge of people that they plan to work with. Although there are several sources of information, this awareness is maintained primarily through text-based communication (mailing lists and chat systems). These textual channels have several characteristics that help to support the maintenance of awareness, as long as developers are committed to reading the lists and to making their project communication public.
The problem with ‘Awareness’: Introductory Remarks on ‘Awareness in CSCW
- Computer Supported Cooperative Work, an International Journal
, 2002
"... At a very early stage in the course of CSCW, it became evident that categories such as ‘conversation ’ or ‘workflow ’ were quite insufficient for characterizing and understanding the ways in which cooperative work is coordinated and integrated. It quickly became obvious that cooperating actors someh ..."
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At a very early stage in the course of CSCW, it became evident that categories such as ‘conversation ’ or ‘workflow ’ were quite insufficient for characterizing and understanding the ways in which cooperative work is coordinated and integrated. It quickly became obvious that cooperating actors somehow, while doing their indi-vidual bits, take heed of the context of their joint effort. More specifically, the early harvest of ethnographic field studies in CSCW (e.g., Harper et al., 1989b; Harper et al., 1989a; Heath and Luff, 1991) indicated that cooperating actors align and integrate their activities with those of their colleagues in a seemingly ‘seamless’ manner, that is, without interrupting each other, for instance by asking, suggesting, requesting, ordering, reminding, etc. others of this or that. As a placeholder for these elusive practices of taking heed of what is going on in the setting which seem to play a key role in cooperative work, the term ‘awareness ’ was soon adopted. Not surprisingly then, the concept of ‘awareness ’ has come to play a central role in CSCW, and from the very beginning CSCW researchers have been exploring how computer-based technologies might facilitate some kind of ‘awareness ’ among
Empirical Development of a Heuristic Evaluation Methodology for Shared Workspace Groupware
, 2002
"... Good real time groupware products are hard to develop, in part because evaluating their support for the basic activities of teamwork is difficult and costly. To address this problem, we are developing discount evaluation methods that look for groupware-specific usability problems. In a previous pape ..."
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Cited by 65 (3 self)
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Good real time groupware products are hard to develop, in part because evaluating their support for the basic activities of teamwork is difficult and costly. To address this problem, we are developing discount evaluation methods that look for groupware-specific usability problems. In a previous paper, we detailed a new set of usability heuristics that evaluators can use to inspect shared workspace groupware to see how they support for teamwork. We wanted to determine whether the new heuristics could be integrated into a low-cost methodology that parallels Nielsen’s traditional heuristic evaluation (HE). To this end, we examined 27 evaluations of two shared workspace groupware systems and analysed the inspectors ’ relative performance and variability. Similar to Nielsen’s findings for traditional HE, individual inspectors discovered about a fifth of the total known teamwork problems, and that there was only modest overlap in the problems they found. Groups of three to five inspectors would report about 40– 60 % of the total known teamwork problems. These results suggest that heuristic evaluation using our groupware heuristics can be an effective and efficient method for identifying teamwork problems in shared workspace groupware systems.
The Importance of Awareness for Team Cognition in Distributed Collaboration
- In
, 2001
"... Introduction Although the phrase team cognition suggests something that happens inside people's heads, teams are very much situated in the real world, and there are a number of things that have to happen out in that world for teams to be able to think and work together. This is not just spoken ..."
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Cited by 64 (10 self)
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Introduction Although the phrase team cognition suggests something that happens inside people's heads, teams are very much situated in the real world, and there are a number of things that have to happen out in that world for teams to be able to think and work together. This is not just spoken communication. Depending on the circumstances, effective team cognition includes things like using environmental cues to establish a common ground of understanding, seeing who is around and what they are doing, monitoring the state of artefacts in a shared work setting, noticing other people's gestures and what they are referring to, and so on (Clark, 1996; Hutchins, 1996). In this chapter, we will argue that awareness of other group members is a critical building block in the construct of team cognition, and consequently that computational support for awareness in groupware systems is crucial for supporting team cognition in distributed groups. Our main message is that: ... for people to sust
Collaborative Coupling over Tabletop Displays
- Proc. CHI 2006, ACM
, 2006
"... Designing collaborative interfaces for tabletops remains difficult because we do not fully understand how groups coordinate their actions when working collaboratively over tables. We present two observational studies of pairs completing independent and shared tasks that investigate collaborative cou ..."
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Cited by 62 (5 self)
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Designing collaborative interfaces for tabletops remains difficult because we do not fully understand how groups coordinate their actions when working collaboratively over tables. We present two observational studies of pairs completing independent and shared tasks that investigate collaborative coupling, or the manner in which collaborators are involved and occupied with each other’s work. Our results indicate that individuals frequently and fluidly engage and disengage with group activity through several distinct, recognizable states with unique characteristics. We describe these states and explore the consequences of these states for tabletop interface design. Author Keywords Collaborative tabletop displays, single display groupware, mixed focus collaboration, coordination, coupling ACM Classification Keywords H.5.3. Group and organizational interfaces: computersupported cooperative work.
On the use of visualization to support awareness of human activities in software development: a survey and a framework
- Proceedings of the 2005 ACM symposium on Software visualization
, 2005
"... This paper proposes a framework for describing, comparing and understanding visualization tools that provide awareness of human activities in software development. The framework has several purposes – it can act as a formative evaluation mechanism for tool designers; as an assessment tool for potent ..."
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Cited by 62 (8 self)
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This paper proposes a framework for describing, comparing and understanding visualization tools that provide awareness of human activities in software development. The framework has several purposes – it can act as a formative evaluation mechanism for tool designers; as an assessment tool for potential tool users; and as a comparison tool so that tool researchers can compare and understand the differences between various tools and identify potential new research areas. We use this framework to structure a survey of visualization tools for activity awareness in software development. Based on this survey we suggest directions for future research.
Y.: Collaboration and Interference: Awareness with Mice or Touch Input
- In: Proceedings of ACM CSCW Conference 2008
, 2007
"... Multi-touch surfaces are becoming increasingly popular. An assumed benefit is that they can facilitate collaborative interactions in co-located groups. In particular, being able to see another’s physical actions can enhance awareness, which in turn can support fluid interaction and coordination. How ..."
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Cited by 54 (4 self)
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Multi-touch surfaces are becoming increasingly popular. An assumed benefit is that they can facilitate collaborative interactions in co-located groups. In particular, being able to see another’s physical actions can enhance awareness, which in turn can support fluid interaction and coordination. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence or measures to support these claims. We present an analysis of different aspects of awareness in an empirical study that compared two kinds of input: multi-touch and multiple mice. For our analysis, a set of awareness indices was derived from the CSCW and HCI literatures, which measures both the presence and absence of awareness in colocated settings. Our findings indicate higher levels of awareness for the multi-touch condition accompanied by significantly more actions that interfere with each other. A subsequent qualitative analysis shows that the interactions in this condition were more fluid and that interference was quickly resolved. We suggest that it is more important that resources are available to negotiate interference rather than necessarily to attempt to prevent it.
Leveraging single-user applications for multiuser collaboration: The CoWord approach
- Proceedings of the 2004 ACM
, 2004
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A Generic Approach to Supporting Diagram Differencing and Merging for Collaborative Design
- Pages 204–213 of: ASE ’05: Proceedings of the 20th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering
"... Differentiation tools enable team members to compare two or more text files, e.g. code or documentation, after change. Although a number of general-purpose differentiation tools exist for comparing text documents very few tools exist for comparing diagrams. We describe a new approach for realising v ..."
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Cited by 45 (4 self)
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Differentiation tools enable team members to compare two or more text files, e.g. code or documentation, after change. Although a number of general-purpose differentiation tools exist for comparing text documents very few tools exist for comparing diagrams. We describe a new approach for realising visual differentiation in CASE tools via a set of plug-in components. We have added diagram version control, visual differentiation and merging support as component-based plug-ins to the Pounamu meta-CASE tool. The approach is generic across a wide variety of diagram types and has also been deployed with an Eclipse diagramming plug-in. We describe our approach’s architecture, key design and implementation issues, illustrate feasibility of our approach via implementation of it as plug-in components and evaluate its effectiveness. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.2 [[Software Engineering]] Design Tools and Techniques – CASE tools
IMPROMPTU: A New Interaction Framework for Supporting Collaboration in Multiple Display Environments and Its Field Evaluation for Co-located Software Development
"... We present a new interaction framework for collaborating in multiple display environments (MDEs) and report results from a field study investigating its use in an authentic work setting. Our interaction framework, IMPROMPTU, allows users to share task information across displays via off-theshelf app ..."
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Cited by 39 (1 self)
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We present a new interaction framework for collaborating in multiple display environments (MDEs) and report results from a field study investigating its use in an authentic work setting. Our interaction framework, IMPROMPTU, allows users to share task information across displays via off-theshelf applications, to jointly interact with information for focused problem solving and to place information on shared displays for discussion and reflection. Our framework also includes a lightweight interface for performing these and related actions. A three week field study of our framework was conducted in the domain of face-to-face group software development. Results show that teams utilized almost every feature of the framework in support of a wide range of development-related activities. The framework was used most to facilitate opportunistic collaboration involving task information. Teams reported wanting to continue using the framework as they found value in it overall.
