Paper Info
Title
Information Needs in Collocated Software Development Teams
Abstract
Previous research has documented the fragmented nature of software development work. To explain this in more detail, we analyzed software developers' day-to-day information needs. We observed seventeen developers at a large software company and transcribed their activities in 90-minute sessions. We analyzed these logs for the information that developers sought, the sources that they used, and the situations that prevented information from being acquired. We identified twenty-one information types and cataloged the outcome and source when each type of information was sought. The most frequently sought information included awareness about artifacts and coworkers. The most often deferred searches included knowledge about design and program behavior, such as why code was written a particular way, what a program was supposed to do, and the cause of a program state. Developers often had to defer tasks because the only source of knowledge was unavailable coworkers.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1109/ICSE.2007.45
ICSE
Keywords
Field
DocType
collocated software development teams,program behavior,unavailable coworkers,large software company,deferred search,twenty-one information type,day-to-day information need,90-minute session,information needs,software development work,software developer,program state,information need,social science,writing,information analysis,software engineering,empirical study,content management,systems analysis,programming,software development,cloning,software maintenance,switches,design patterns,file servers
World Wide Web,Information needs,Computer science,Systems analysis,Software design pattern,Software,Content management,Software maintenance,Software development,Empirical research
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
0270-5257
0-7695-2828-7
220
PageRank 
References 
Authors
9.95
18
3
Search Limit
100220
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
andrew j ko149924.86
Robert DeLine22957210.35
Gina Venolia3158187.04