collaborative software design & development coordination...

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Collaborative Software Design and Development Coordination 4

EE 382V – Spring 08

Collaborative Software Design & Development

Coordination 4

Laura NaymanJason VanFickell

2008/04/01

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The Impact of Time Separation on Coordination in Global Software Teams: a Conceptual Foundation

J. Espinosa and Erran Carmel

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OverviewDecreased efficiency from time separation results from:

Time-zone differences

Non-overlapping weekends, holidays, manufacturing shifts and work schedules

Teams employ different tactics for dealing with this inefficiency:

Synchronous

Asynchronous

Education

Coordination between developers in teams consists of four main components:

Communication

Clarification

Delay

Rework

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Overview Continued…Vulnerability costs which increase inefficiency and costs are incurred

as a result of:Resolving misunderstandings

Rework. (These increase with time separation.)

Reasons for decreased/inefficient coordination in the presence of time

separationInsufficient communication media

Difficulties in resolving unclear messages

Reduced opportunities for spontaneous interaction

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Motivation

Why are cost benefit trade-offs of higher coordination costs and lower

productions costs important to understand?

Time separation has a huge impact on coordination costs

Team work is increasingly carried out globally for the following reasons:

Transportations costs for digital products are low (software, documents)

Delivery time for these products is effectively zero

Production costs in many “offshore” locations is significantly lower

Geographic dispersion enables firms to access software talent and technical resources

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BackgroundPractices used by developers to overcome difficulties resulting from time separation:

Asynchronous: Teams compensate for non-overlapping work hours by using different methods

Asynchronous tactics: email, voice mail, shared databases, wikis, code-versioning tools with

comments sections.

Teams also learn to structure their comments and information in such a way as to avoid

clarification.

Synchronous: Teams plan for the overlap times and enlarge the windows of overlap time

Synchronous tactics: Teams expand overlap times by working longer or assigning certain

people on the team to work longer or communicate with people in different time zones.

Education: Individual developers become more efficient working with time differences, with better

information.

Education tactics: Make team members aware of time separation issue and give them

resources to help them schedule meetings and make schedules taking into account the

different time zones.

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Coordination Model: Mathematical Perspective

Objective of Coordination Model:

Models costs due to time differences in dispersed software teams

Evaluate how total cost of carrying out a task is influenced by :

cost and effectiveness of different communication

mechanisms in various collaboration modes (i.e. co-located and separated

by distance and/or time)

delays caused by time separation

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Distributed coordination assumptions within Mathematical Coordination model

Assumption: No distinctions between complexities of a task request encapsulated in a message

Problem with Assumption: Both, a large task which perhaps requiring several days of effort,

or small such as yes or no answer are treated the same

Assumption : Media choices for time separated team members are limited to email when work hours

don’t overlap and phone calls otherwise

Problem with Media Choice Assumption:

Requests are often not clear, requiring additional clarification communication, further

delaying the whole process.

Working face-to-face, clarification may be nearly instantaneous.

Even when members are distant, but in same-time zones, clarifications can be made very

quickly through phone calls, instant messaging (IM), or videoconference.

Time separated communication requires the need to clarify messages and will introduce

further delay, unless this happens during work-overlapping hours.

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Coordination Model:Workflow dependency

Costs calculated based on single collaboration between two developers:Task Requestor makes a request to another developer who is the task Producer

because of a workflow dependency,

i.e. the work of the Requestor cannot continue until the work of the Producer is finished

Requestor must communicate the task requirements to the Producer, and the Producer must communicate an acknowledgement to the Requestor when the

dependent task is completed

Team members may be interacting in any of four possible collaboration

modes:Time and/or Distance Separate – 4 possibilities

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Major points

of coordination theoryDevelopers should communicate a lot early in the development process !!!

Communication is costly and time separation introduces asymmetries.

Coordination between N developers separated by distance can be substantialThese issues compound further with time separation

Overlap in work hours between any two members who collaborate can take

place either at the beginning or at the end of one’s workday.

The synchronous or asynchronous solutions to time separation will have to be

worked out differently, depending on when the work-time overlap occurs in

one’s workday

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Argument for Coordination Model

Effect of time separation on global software team coordination can be

modeled by analyzing timing issues:

When interaction between developers occur

Frequency of interaction between developers

Task duration times

Amount of overlap in work hours

Evaluating how these variables affect :

production costs (i.e. the cost of carrying out individual tasks)

coordination costs (i.e. the cost of managing the dependencies between

individual tasks)

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Breakdown of Coordination Costs:

Coordination Costs mainly composed of production costs and communication costs.

Coordination costs can be further decomposed into the following costs:

communication costs – the cost of maintaining communication links and the cost of sending and

receiving messages

delay costs – the cost of delays caused by the dependency requiring communication

Affected by latency inherent in the communication media and working-time differences

clarification costs – the cost of further communication required to repair miscommunication

rework costs – the cost of further production necessary for work that was completed before the

miscommunication was discovered

Differences from Malone’s coordination model:

some adjustments to take into account delays resulting from distance separation

time zone differences

Model time and distance separation between actors.

Malone’s model analyzes different coordination structures for a set of developers

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Coordination Costs: Terminology

Production Costs: Costs of carrying out task

Coordination costs are essentially communication costs :Costs of maintaining communication links and sending and

receiving messages.

Delay costs: Incurred because one developer is waiting for

another to complete the task.

Clarification costs: additional cost of communication and delay

because of miscommunication.

Rework costs: additional production costs resulting from

miscommunication.

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Coordination FormulasProduction Costs (Pc) is the cost of carrying out tasks

Pc = λCpTt

λ = Daily frequency of task arrivals (messages)

Cp = Daily production cost rate for the Producer

Tt = Time for Producer to complete task

Cost component only involves individual production time

and costs incurred by the Producer

Unaffected by time or distance separation.

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Coordination FormulasCommunication Costs (Cc) = Cl + 2λCm (2)

Cl = Daily cost of maintaining a communication link between two time-separated

developers

Cm = Daily cost of sending individual single messages.

Cls = Cost of maintaining a synchronous communication link

Cla = Cost of maintaining an asynchronous communication link

Cms = Cost of sending a synchronous message

Cma = Cost of sending an asynchronous message

Several Permutations of Communication Costs Equation

Both members communicate synchronously

Cl + 2λCms

One member communicates asynchronously and one synchronously

Cl + Cla + λ(Cms + Cma)

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Coordination FormulasDelay Costs (Dc) = λTdCd

Td = Delay experienced by task Requestor while Producer completes task

Cd = Daily rate of cost delay for the task Requestor

Measured from perspective of the task Requestor, because this is the developer who has a

dependency, whose work is delayed while the Producer completes the task.

If Producer carries out task during Requestor’s off hours, Td is zero, which is the motivator

for software work organized in follow-the-sun arrangements

if Producer does all work during overlapping work hours, Td is identical to the time it takes to

carry out the task Tt

Degree of time separation or work-time overlap has substantial effect on delay costs

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Coordination Formulas

Clarification Costs (Cf ) = Cf = Pu(Cc + Dc)

Pu = Probability that task-request message will be unclear

Incurred when task request messages are not clear

Task Requestor and task Producer need to communicate again to

resolve misunderstanding,

Further communication and delay costs are incurred

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Coordination Formulas

Rework Costs (Rc) = PuPrRwPc

Pr = Probability given unclear message will lead to rework

Rw = Proportion of total task that needs rework

Rc = Rework costs

Incurred if need for clarification occurs after Producer has started to

work on task and some software work needs to be redone.

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Vulnerability CostsFollow-the-sun and round-the-clock programming arrangements

ideal if:

Cost of carrying out task = Pc + Cc + Dc

Substantial delay costs savings by maximizing the amount of

task production that takes place during the Requestor’s off hours

Malone’s ‘vulnerability’ costs = clarification and rework costs

Problem surfaces when vulnerabilities materialize, requiring

further communication to clarify issues and possible rework

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Vulnerability Costs EvaluatedVulnerability costs affected by quality of communication

medium

Pu is dependent on the particular medium used

Pu for face-to-face communication is very low

Pu increases as teams move to leaner communication media

like video/voice conference and email

Pu increases as global team members span more boundaries

(e.g. cultural, functional, language) (Watson-Manheim et al. 2002, Espinosa et al. 2003)

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Vulnerability Costs EvaluatedVulnerability costs affected by time separation

Longer delays are introduced

Team forced to use asynchronous communication tools at times

when such communication media may not be the most effective

Lean communication media (e.g. electronic mail) may not be the

most appropriate form of communication for equivocal tasks

that contain more uncertainties (Dennis and Kinney 1998)

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Summary of Coordination ModelCoordination Model involves the following costs:

Individual production costs (Pc) necessary to carry out individual software development task activities

Coordination costs (Co) necessary to manage the dependencies among different task activities. These costs

are composed of:communication costs (Cc)delay costs (Dc)Clarification costs (Cf)Rework Costs (Rc)

Application of these formulas will vary substantially in complexity depending on:Timing of team members interaction (when request and response occur relative to each other)

Coordination costs are sensitive to time at which a request is initiated and the time at which

that request is responded to.

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Practical Applications for ModelCoordination model decomposes total cost of collaboration between developers with time

and/or distance separation.

Model can be helpful to project managers when creating budgets and schedules for

software projects.

Model is practical because it gives users the ability to change parameters and

relax/tighten assumptions

Possible practical expansions to the model:

Include the presence of multiple synchronous and asynchronous communication

tools

Would reduce communication costs by reducing the delay in exchanging

information

Different types of tasks (longer, more complicated) can be modeled by

increasing the task duration variable (Tt) and/or the frequency of task requests

(gamma) and/or increase the clarification variable (Pu).

Possible to add delays and assign priorities to tasks and then recalculate costs

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Coordination Model LimitationsMajor Limitations of model which affect its use in practical applications:

No distinction between task complexity:

Complex tasks need to be modeled as sequence of communication events which would increase the

communications costs on many levels.

Production cost estimate for a software project is way off without some knowledge about

complexity of task

Assumption made on mode of communication

Assumption that face-to-face communication occurs instantaneously

E.g. People in the same building have different schedules and meetings and other priorities

Coordination model needs to be adjusted to change communication delays based on task priority.

Higher priority tasks will involve multiple modes of communication to resolve the problem quickly

Less rework might be required as a result

Important issues get dealt with quickly and with quality because peoples jobs are on the line

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Issues in Global Software Development affecting Coordination Model

Time separation is reduced overlap in work hours and not necessary time zone differences

Reduction in overlap reduces the time during which synchronous communication can occur

Work schedules, holidays, weekends, and other scenarios increase overlap in work hours.

The model focuses more on time separation rather than time zone differences because it

many scenarios software development projects create overlapping work hours in spite of

different schedules to increase efficiency and decrease development costs due to

communication delay costs.

Time separation leads most teams to change their work norms

Components of Coordination model can be decreased

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ConclusionModel contains five cost components:

production, communication, delay, clarification, and rework costs.

If a given time-separation configuration is not cost-effective,

developers will make decisions:

Change work schedules of some or all of its members to either

increase time overlaps to reduce clarification and rework costs

Reduce time overlap to reduce delay costs (e.g. shift work,

follow-the-sun)

• All decisions made provided that the timing of task requests can

be programmed optimally.

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Global Software Development in Practice Lessons Learned

Rafael Prikladnicki,Jorge Luis Nicolas Audy, and

Roberto Evaristo

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Motivations for GSD

Global Software Development is lucrative to commercial endeavours, not just for open source projects

What are some of the benefits to GSD that have motivated corporate organizations to start using it

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Motivations for GSD

Proximity to more customers

Software products easily delivered globally

Reducing time to marketUsually by employing 'follow-the-sun' development

Ability to select resources from a larger pool

Improve efficiency using resources where they are available

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What makes GSD so unique?

Time-zone differencesReal-time communication is limited to small windows

Physical distanceOnline coordination tools inefficientNo face-to-face meetings

Cultural differencesLanguageTraditionsNorms of behavior

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Challenges of GSD

Strategy decisionsHow do you divide up the project?Which site has the resources to do each part?Which sites have the necessary experience and infrastructure?

Cultural DifferencesMiscommunication most often caused by cultural differences

What are some ways that these risks can be mitigated?

What are the major challenges of GSD?

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Challenges of GSD (contd.)

Knowledge managementBecause communication during GSD is so expensive, missing documentation results in lost productivityCompared to co-located projects, documentation provides a much higher return on investment due to the decrease in risk

What types of methods or tools could be used to improve knowledge management?

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Challenges of GSD (contd.)

Technical issuesProject management requires more effort, because synchronization of milestones is more difficultData network performance can impede project work

Intranet mechanisms that are fast on a single site may be painfully slow for a remote site due to latencyLarge project artifacts can take on the order of hours for remote sites to download, leading to lost productivity

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Related Work

GSD significantly affects how software is produced, so new mechanisms are needed to support it (Herbsleb and Moitra 2001)

(Karolak 1998) discussed a software life cycle tailored to GSD

Centripetal and centrifugal forces that affect GSD teams (Carmel 1999)

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Related Work (contd.)

Centripetal forces:Coordination breakdownLoss of communication richnessGeographic dispersionCultural differencesLoss of 'teamness'

What types of activities are needed to help hold teams together?

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Centrifugal forcesTelecommunications infrastructureStrong product architectureTeam buildingManagerial techniquesCollaborative technologyDevelopment methodology

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(Evaristo 2003) describes several dimensions to any distributed project where management should watch out for problems

TrustLevels of dispersionSynchronicityComplexityTypes of stakeholdersSystems methodologyType of projectsPolicies and standardsPerceived distanceCulture

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Case Studies

2 international corporations, both SW-CMM level 2

2 projects at each organization were interviewed

Data sources:1 manager and 5 developers in each project interviewedOrganizational and project surveys used separatelyDocumentation reviewsMission analysisBusiness processMeeting minutesSoftware process descriptions

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Case Study: Organization 1

Headquarters in Brazil with branches in Latin America, USA and Europe

9 units were responsible for consulting, training, and software development

80 people

RUP & PMI processes used in ISO 9001 organization

GSD chosen because of cost reduction/competitiveness, creating units of specialization

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Case Study: Organization 1 (contd.)

Project AApplication for a large US companyManaged on both the client and company side

Project BBanking application for company in BrazilSubcontracted to the group from another subcontractorFirst subcontractor represented the customer and sometimes the project team

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Case Study: Organization 2

Company headquarters in the US

180 people from 3 groups in 2 different continents

Responsible for worldwide internal computer demand

Microsoft Solutions Framework, RUP, PMI used

Applications used by international organization

GSD done for cost reduction, global strategy, and international trademark consolidation

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Case Study: Organization 2 (contd.)

Project CHuman Resources applicationCustomers in the US officeDevelopers in US and Brazil

Project DManufacturing applicationUsers and customers in USDevelopers in multiple branches but based in Brazil

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Case Studies: Results

What factors do you think would have affected the level of success of each of these projects

Table 2. GSD difficulties found

GSD difficulties Dimension Organization

Requirements engineering Technical 1, 2Software development process Technical 1, 2Software configuration Technical 1Knowledge management Technical 1Communication and language Nontechnical 1, 2Culture and context sharing Nontechnical 2Trust Nontechnical 1, 2

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Problem areasLack of standards or processDifficulty in sharing information without a knowledge management systemRequirements phase consistently more difficult

More detailed requirements had to compensate for lack of information sharing

Software configuration managementEach site was working with different versions

Trust issues developedMiscommunication was common

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SolutionsWork standardizationPlanningImproved formal software process

Especially requirements engineering

Risk management process (only used by Organization 1)

Process was specialized for distributed projects

Increasing trust through training on several topics

Leadership, Communication, Culture, Context Sharing,

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Determining success factorsFormal processTrainingPlanning appropriate sites for each projectFirst interteam contactActivities to improve trust, communication, and feedback

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Lessons Learned : 1 & 2Project and risk management need more attention

GSD causes these tasks to take more timeProblems are able to go unnoticed for a longer timeThese problems will become serious threats to success

More detailed processes are needed

All projects without good processes sufferedAt the start of the project agree on the following:

Coding standardsCode ownershipToolsActivities

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Lessons Learned : 3 & 4Knowledge management causes information sharing and learning from experience

Co-located teams do this naturallyGlobally distributed teams must encourage this process

Requirements phase is the biggest challenge in GSDOften are unclear or have errorsWasted time results in increased project costsMitigation strategy

Spend much more time in requirements meetingEnsure all stakeholders are present in these meetingsFully document the results for all to see

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Lessons Learned: 5 & 6

Planning is the key to distributed projectsMatching the right project to the right teamIdentifying the associated risks before starting

Recruiting and training global teams minimized non-technical problems

Training before starting the project minimizes the chance of miscommunication

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Lessons Learned : 7

Tools help distributed interaction, particularly communication tools

Seek out the best collaboration tools you can findTeach everyone how and when to use themTeach the team when communication escalation is appropriate

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Lessons Learned : 8

Distributed Software Development is a maturity process

It takes organizations time to mature (much like with CMM) Most organizations are experiencing basic problems now, because they are at a lower maturity level

They could learn a lot from more the more mature

organizations, possibly preventing the same mistakes

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Analysis & Critique

High level of detail in case studies

Time zone differences not prevalent in all projects

Validated theory

Only observational

Other comments?

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Conclusion & Discussion

GSD will become the normImproved facilitating technologyContinued cost pressuresSmaller independent groups can specialize their process

Challenges will persistManaging non co-located teams is a continued challengeLargest challenge is reducing the problems that asynchronous communication create

Future work could focus on specific aspects

Requirements, Risk Management, or Project Allocation

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