Title
Understanding coordination in global software engineering: A mixed-methods study on the use of meetings and Slack
Abstract
Given the relevance of coordination in the field of global software engineering, this work was carried out to further understand coordination mechanisms. Specifically, we investigated meetings and the collaboration tool Slack. We conducted a longitudinal case study using a mixed-methods approach with surveys, observations, interviews, and chat logs. Our quantitative results show that employees in global projects spend 7 h 45 min per week on average in scheduled meetings and 8 h 54 min in unscheduled meetings. Furthermore, distributed teams were significantly larger than co-located teams, and people working in distributed teams spent somewhat more time in meetings per day. We found that low availability of key people, absence of organizational support for unscheduled meetings and unbalanced activity from team members in meetings and on Slack were barriers for effective coordination across sites. The positive aspects of using collaboration tools in distributed teams were increased team awareness and informal communication and reduced the need for e-mail. Our study emphasizes the importance of reflecting on how global software engineering teams use meetings and collaboration tools to coordinate. We provide practical advice for conducting better meetings and give suggestions for more efficient use of collaboration tools in global projects.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1016/j.jss.2020.110717
Journal of Systems and Software
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Distributed teams,Global teamwork,Agile software development,Team communication platforms,Collaboration tools,Computer-mediated communication
Journal
170
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0164-1212
7
0.47
References 
Authors
0
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Viktoria Gulliksen Stray14111.46
Nils Brede Moe267352.61