Chapter 4: Data analyzes and interpretation

It is widely accepted that software engineering process is highly collaborative and complex

process in its all dimensions. It needs high team effort, technological support, engineering

knowledge and a perfect control and coordination system. Communication and social interaction

among team members is one of the critical element in collaborative process of software

development, since the organization have to design large software system with global

collaboration by satisfying the diverse needs of clients all over the globe. Software development

is a knowledge oriented process, a developer can learn and collaborate with another developer

for acquiring quality, productivity and problem solving. This point outs the importance of a

social networking system in a software developing company more than any other organization.

According to the research conducted by Clear Swift commission (2010), more than 20 percent of

IT companies are already making effective use of Social Medias inside their organization to

strengthen their businesses.

Infosys limited is one among top Indian IT organization started their operation in 1981, with

current revenue of US$ 6.35 billion. Infosys can be caught as a classic example for the effective

incorporation of advanced technological opportunities in their business. Company have a number

of technological platforms like global delivery model, social networking, process and quality

tools, work flow management, knowledge management etc. According to Infosys project

manager Company gives strict priorities to client satisfaction, employee motivation and

satisfaction, communication and interaction. Infosys have a global foot print with 63

development centers and 63 offices all over the globe with 133,560 employees. Thus company

believes that social interaction between their employees can contribute much to the global

collaboration and coordination in addition to the productivity and quality gain. This part of the

research critically evaluates the social networking practices of Infosys and its impact on the

efficiency of project developer. For this, the discussion will go through positive as well as

negative aspect regarding the social networking activities of the organization with different

modes of social networking communication.

4.1 Software engineering and social networking tools

According to the survey conducted for this research hundred percent (34 out of 34) of the

employees accepts the fact that they make use of the social networking applications while they

work. This shows the overview about the usage of social applications tools inside the software

engineering environment of Infosys. Lot of feature are includes to the integrated development

environment (IDE) of the organization for focusing on the purposes like coordination,

collaboration, support and communication. Use of Social Medias or web 2.0 technologies in the

development environment is actually becoming an unavoidable factor in software industry even

though control and security is challenge. The survey results point outs that, developers use social

media inside the organization to collaborate global activities and support. In order to cope with

the tight competition in the market, organizations must adapt the wide range of innovative social

media tools. Since the organization has to ensure security and confidentiality, Infosys has

designed their own social networking media tools with better control and security, other than

promoting face book and Twitter in work place.

Before going into analyzes and evaluation stage of this research, let’s have a brief idea about the

different social networking 2.0 features organization making use to deliver global quality

software products. According to Infosys, the social media applications of the organization

actually integrated a wide range of process and development tools from IDE (Integrated

Development Environment) and CDE (Collaborative Development Environment) to support

software development activities as well as individual learning. According to the Manager, Every

time when the system is updates, more and more social media tools and features are adopted and

integrated to the software engineering environment. To get a more clear view about how these

social media applications supports software engineering process, Let’s have a quick discussion

about some of the important social media features Infosys making use in their software

engineering practice.

Wikis: Wikis are one of the important tools which strengthen the collaboration inside the

organization. Some of the main use of wikis in software engineering is documentation, support,

requirement tracking, defect tracking etc. Wikis allows multi users to add, remove and edit

content information and act as knowledge source for the developers.

Blogs: Through blogging employees and self publish their views and opinions in the form of

online journals and articles. Blog owner will periodically post information and the readers can

comment up on the updates. This is one of the most interactive feature Infosys employees

making use to social relationship.

Micro blogs: This is normally uses maintain communication between software developers for

coordination. Unlike blogging, here content of exchange will be small like short sentences,

documents pictures, videos etc

Tagging: It is generally a keyword to track the content on the portal. In Infosys tagging is

generally uses in project portals so that the developer can tag issues, solution, project release etc.

This enables the developers to increase the flexibility and saves time.

Collaborative real time editors: This is one of the most useful social media tools which allow

editing the content of a file, text or any other document by different developers on a network at

the same time.

Feeds: This circulates the important information and updates inside the organization

automatically with updates the content frequently. This helps the developers to receive

awareness about the working environment, processes new procedures etc.

Forums: This is the main means of support for the developers from the experts, developers can

communicate, make discussions and conversations. Unlike from the chat forms can hold the

conversions as posted messages so that other developers can refer this information for their

problem solving.

4.2 Positive and Negative aspect of Social Networking on Employee Efficiency

These are some of the important social networking features Infosys incorporates to their software

engineering environment. Research now commences through positive and negative aspects of

these features in relation to the efficiency of the software developers inside the organization.

4.2 Positive aspects of SNS

4.2.1 Interaction and collaboration

Every software development organization must have a well organized and standardized internal

project management and work follow management system. These facilitate collaboration of

global operations and coordinates efforts of work force globally, automatically according to the

dynamic project environment. It is highly important that the system must ensure right

information at the right time to the right person. Infosys have more than 120 offices and

developing centers all over the globe. So employees from different geographical location and

time zone must interact and collaborate effectively so that better task coordination and work

quality can be acquired according to the global standard. If the support and guidance social

networking system helps employees to reduce his time spend on the project without losing

quality, it will boost overall productivity and efficiency of employees. Since time is money, this

will improve the profitability as well. For acquiring these benefits employees have the right

provision to interact and make shared relationship so that they achieve same goal. According to

the Manager, social networking tools of Infosys actually makes effective use of the inherent

computer communication technologies (web 2.0) to enable group interaction and relationship

between Infosys employees all over the globe regardless to the time and geographical location.

In the survey as well most of the employees have given positive replay to this fact. Details of the

questionnaire replay are given in the graph given below.

Positive Neutral Negative05

101520253035

SNS Vs Employee Interaction and collabration

Project Associatives Senior AssociativesTotal

4.2.2 Personal relationship inside the organization

In addition to the social network interaction and support tools, Infosys have an exact social

networking feature called Infosys bubble. Bubble is a Facebook type social networking site

specially designed for enhancing personal relationship between employees as well as their fun

and refreshment. Infosys bubble is an intra- firm social networking space, proved to be

successful with their large employee base. Through these employees can share their thoughts,

pictures, blogs and make relationship regardless to the work pressure and other job oriented

issues. According to the Infosys, Bubble has already 261,000 connections and 74,376 profiles

among employees. Even though company encourages the freedom and fun for the employees,

some restrictions and control over use of bubble, like posting personal comments to maintain

discipline in this social platform.

According to the Senior Vice President of Infosys, “We understood the need of communication

and social interaction among Infosys employees so we implemented Bubble, in addition

company also planning to launch an in-house radio called Infy radio very soon “ ( Nandita Gurjar

,VO Infosys)

Through social network, organization could maintain potential relationship among employees,

which ultimately leads to potential ties. Normally employees uses this relationship to discuss

work related matters , so that they will get help and support which will ultimately reflect in the

efficiency of the employee. In another way, employees require social feedback for all his

contributions. Social feedback will help to rectify employee problems and is essential for the

growth of individual as well as organization. “Social feedback is essential in the formation of a

digital reputation and it allows other users to rate the contributions of others.” (Brown & Dugid,

2000). In the survey, 18 out of 34 accept that, they are an active user of Infosys bubble. Details

of the replay is shown in the table given below,

Project Associative

(24)

Senior Engineer

(10)

Total (34)

Positive 10 08 18

Neutral 05 02 07

Negative 09 00 09

Survey replay shows that a good percent of project associative are not an active user of Infosys

bubble. Only 53 % (18 out of 34) is in favor for Infosys bubble. In order to make a sound

argument, let’s take the correlation analysis the replay. As per the correlation analysis, the usage

of Infosys bubble increases with employees experience in the organization. Out of the 9 negative

replays, seven is from project associative with less than one year experience and out of 5 neutral

replays two is from employees with less experience.

The graph strengthens the argument that as the experience increase, use of social networking

tools also increases inside the organization. According to the Project Manager, Since a lot of

other social networking facilities like blogging, wikis, forums, live chatting , messaging etc are

integrated to the collaborative workflow management system, project associative are less

attracted to Infosys bubble. This can also be point out as another reason of unavoidable number

of negative and neutral replays in the survey for the particular question.

4.2.3 Global contact list

Another important benefit of social networking in business is that it helps employees in the

organization to make a global list of contact details. This contact list is entirely different from

other electronic directories, because it will updates automatically with any profile differences,

current activities, special interests, skills etc. In addition all these information will be in

searchable format. According to the manager, most of the employees in the organization making

use of this personal contact list available from social networking tools to increase their efficiency

in work. In the survey as well, about 28 out of 34 participants agreed to the statement that”

Social networking helps employees to create global contact list with colleagues, coworker etc,

which ultimately helps to improve the work efficiency of employees”. Details of the replay are

shown in the table given below.

Project Analyst Senior Engineer Total

Positive 19 (80%) 09 (90%) 28 (82%)

Neutral 03 (12%) 01 (10%) 04 (11%)

Negative 02 (08%) 00 02 (07%)

4.2.4 Social networking and Knowledge management

Infosys is one among the earliest organization which integrated knowledge management system

in their social networking and work flow management system. After a number of development

stages, Infosys finally installed web based portal with social networking capabilities and access

to information, knowledge and experts called k shop in 1999. The main objective of the system

was to create provision of collaborative learning environment for Infosys employees so that they

can solve work related problems collectively, share new knowledge, information, skills etc.

Social networking tools helped employees to share solutions and new idea with peers, so that

knowledge actually maintained effectively inside the organization. According to manager,

Infosys is trying hard to maintain the natural flow of knowledge by distributing knowledge

through social channels inside the organization so that challenges from various lines of

department, geographical locations and time zone can be minimized.

Infosys have an effective hierarchical structure which supports the knowledge management and

learning. Granovetter (2004) says that, for a hierarchical organization the weak and strong ties of

employees obtained through social network helps to gain specialist knowledge and information.

Some time the organizational resources will be wasted, including time when employees tries to

find solution for problems in their work flow, without knowing that someone else in the

organization have been already created the solutions earlier. This can become a serious issue

inside knowledge oriented organization like Infosys. Social networking links of employees

automatically minimizes these challenges by making use of contact list and ties during their

work. This definitely increases employee’s efficiency inside the organization. According to

Infosys manager, combined advantages of knowledge management as well as social networking

that employees get or find out better support and increasing their efficiency by eliminating the

mistakes and faults encountered in past. Let’s see the survey results which indicate the success of

collaborative learning environment and knowledge management inside the organization. About

23 out of 34 employees have accepted the fact that social networking application in knowledge

management system helps them to get support from experts and avoids mistakes during the

workflow.

4.2.5 Productivity and workflow with communication modes

Social networking 2.0 applications are based on communication tools with advanced web .20

technologies. “The integration of different modes of computer mediated communication into one

application allows knowledge workers to aggregate information in an effective manner.”

(Cairncross, 2001, IBM,2007). Before two three decades productivity and workflow of a

software developing organization were controlled and accelerated with one to one

communication modes like e-mail, instant messaging and telephone calls. At that time this

modes of communication was a break through since synchronous real time communication were

time consuming. After that asynchronous communication like email, chats etc seem to be over

used or misused. (Richel, 2008) Now comes the era of web.2.0 technology and social networking

techniques, which are highly influenced personal life as well as business. Thus organizations

started implementing the strategy of improving productivity and efficiency of employees through

social networking communication tools like wikis, blogs, instantaneous messaging etc. Software

developing activity is complex process in which employees are supposed to take a number of

decisions in there every day work. According to the Manager of Infosys, employee’s uses open

forum to make discussion and get support to make decisions. So that send and resend of emails

are not necessary. This saves time and lead to increased efficiency and productivity. Let’s see

some of the most commonly using computer mediated communication tools included in social

networking 2.0 Infosys.

One to one communication mode: One to one communication is time critical communication

with confidential and sensitive information. Infosys employee’s uses messaging system

integrated in integrated working environment or email system for private and personal

communication. According to the primary level information collected, employees prefer to use

messaging system integrated in social networking than conventional e mail system.

One to many communication mode: This communication mode is normally used to circulate

ideas, information and skills to a broad audience. Infosys k –shop includes blogging option, in

which employees shares their knowledge in a narrative format. According Infosys manager,

Company formally used traditional communication methods like newsletters, but the

introduction of new advanced communication tools like blogs has made drastic changes in

employee one to many communications, reflected in the improvement of employee efficiency.

Many to many communication mode: Many to many communication mode is one of the most

attractive communication mode web 2.0 technologies. Infosys make use of wikis and forums for

this kind of communication. Wikis helps the organization to collaborate multiple users for

effective support and decision making by adding , editing and removing content from the

website. Forums includes the question answer section with the experts, in which employees can

refer this for frequent problems or communicate with experts to find solution to their problems.

According to Infosys , company focuses on joint decision making and collaborative planning

with this mode of communication. In addition this type of communication also helps to acquire

effective knowledge capture and classification.

Infosys actually integrates all this modes of communication into one application actually benefits

to achieve high contribution and participation rate from the employees. In the survey 25 out of

34 participants agreed to the statement of Cairncross (2001) which is “ “The integration of

different modes of computer mediated communication into one application allows knowledge

workers to aggregate information in an effective manner.” From this we can argue that the

integrated communication modes of the social networking tools have made a positive impact in

the efficiency of the employees. Details of the questionnaire replay are shown in the table given

below.

Project Associative

(24)

Senior Engineer

(10)

Total (34)

Positive 19 06 25

Negative 02 03 05

Neutral 03 01 4

4.2.6 Employee satisfaction and motivation

For the evaluating the improvement of employee efficiency due to social networking, it is

important to analyze the satisfaction and motivation level of employees with SNS. Pervious

researches argues that open platform of social networking and collaborative web 2.0 tools have

improved the satisfaction level of employees in the working environment and motivate them to

contribute more to the work they doing. According to Peter Kollock, “ there can be motivations

for people to contribute knowledge, expertise and time without expectation of receiving a direct

benefit in return.” (Smith & Kollock, 2000) To make this clear, a person will be motivated to

help another employee or contribute to the group by expecting to receive help and support with

valuable information in return from the group or individual. This can lead to the creation of an

organizational culture of sharing knowledge, skills and expertise with great team effort.

Another important factor which motivates employees are the rating and feedback features of

social network. Employees will be satisfied with their contribution if they get a good feedback

from the group or team, on the same time feedback also helps them to improve to the expectation

level of team and organization. Organization can effectively rate the contribution of employees

in individual basis with feedback to award them reward. This will improve the satisfaction level

of the employees. According to Infosys manager, companies rates the contribution of employees

with social networking tools and consider this feedback at the time of promotion and other

packages, which will motivate and satisfies employees. Thus we can strengthen the argument of

Brown and Duguid (2000) “Digital reputation serves to recognize a person’s contribution to and

beyond the immediate group and gives value to the individual knowledge and innovation” in the

case of Infosys.

Thus social networking increases the visibility of the employees in a group and the prestige and

recognition develops motivation and satisfaction in them automatically. According to Infosys

manager, this one of the most effective way Infosys promotes innovation in their organization. In

addition most of employees in the survey also agreed to the statement that” Digital recognition

through feedback and rating motivates employees to contribute and improve more and promotes

innovation”. Out of 24 software project analyst 16 and 10 out of 10 senior engineers agreed the

statement. About 5 project analysts disagree this statement and 3 have neutral replay, while the

correlation analyzes it is find out that these replays are from employees with less experience in

the organization. As proved earlier in this research the use and awareness of social networking is

low among employees with less than one year experience. With these circumstances we can

forward the argument that social networking actually motivates employees and promotes

satisfaction. Details of the survey replay and correlation analyses is shown the graphs given

below.

According to the manager employees shares their innovation in the network not only expecting

the rewards and reorganization but also due to the belief that the group will improve their

innovation so that their innovation will moves into reality and would be more useful. From this

company automatically gets a brain storming section on a particular innovation with number

suggestions which makes the innovation fast and adaptable to the working environment. Since

software development is knowledge orientated process and innovation helps the organization to

create competitive advantage on highly competitive market, Infosys is promoting innovation

through social networking with proper motivation and rewarding. These factors also points

towards the positive hypothesis that, social networking contributes to increase the efficiency of

employees in software development.

4.2.7 Support for software engineering

From the above discussion the point became clear that Infosys is making efficient use of social

media features for their collaborative software development process. A part from that, another

important point which can impact employee’s efficiency in working environment is the help and

support features. How well these tools support collaborative and isolated projects without

wasting time and effort is an important question under study. It has already proved that some of

the important social networking 2.0 features of Infosys like wikis and forums tagging etc, helps

employees to find solution for their problem faster and effectively than before. Formally

employees had to use e-mail system by send and resend emails, which probably took hours or

days to get replay. This situation was completely eliminated with the installation of the new

improved networking and communication technology. Forums help the employees to get in

touch with experts for carry out question answer section. On the same time wikis helps the

employees refer, edit, add and remove outdated information which will help employees to built

more user friendly software development environment. According to an Infosys employee, the

help and support features of Infosys are ten times faster than the previous system with more

advanced features. In the survey result also most of the employees (29 out of 34) accepts the fact

that they are utilizing the help and support features of software engineering environment of

Infosys.

4.3 Negative impact of social networking on employees

Let’s discuss some of the negative aspects of social networking which limits efficiency of

employees in an organization. According to Kaperskylab (2008) , through social networking and

other integrated applications employees gets access to large volume of information. This can

create risk of engineering attack like hacking and virus if the organization did not took respective

security measures. The threats from virus, spyware, malware etc is a serious issue when dealing

with social networking in business.

4.3.1 Information security

In modern communicative world businesses compete themselves to communicate and engage

their employees more directly without losing the control of sensitive and intellectual information.

The threat from virus , hackers ,spy virus are minimum in the case of Infosys because , the social

networking features and even the social networking site Infosys Bubble are hundred percent

internal to the organization. An Infosys employee with proper authentication and identification

can only get into this web based tools and social websites. This helps the organization to keep

away any unwanted risk generated through outside hackers and virus.

4.3.2 Misuse and overuse

Another important factor is the misuse of employees like making fake accounts, gathering

personal information like e mail, phone number, job title etc. Using this information for private

purposes other than work related factors can create personal conflicts inside the organization.

This will influence the efficiency of employees by wasting time, coordination issues, team work

etc , and creates extra burden for managers to solve internal problems in busy schedule.

According to manager, Infosys have a higher concern and control on these factors in their social

networks. This is the reason why Infosys strictly regulates the rule inside social network. As per

an article on Tech circle “employees are not allowed to post personal comments, misuse of social

networking facilities since company expects certain level of discipline inside the social

platform.” (Company Management , 2011). This indicates that Infosys management have a

higher hand in regulating employees discipline inside the organization , so that the impact of

misuse in social network will not considerably impact the efficiency of employees negatively.

4.3.3 Productivity

One of the biggest concerns about the use of social networking is the threat for negative impact

on productivity of the organization due to over use. Productivity of an organization can be

reduced if the employees spend so much of time in social networking by posting personal

comments and information other than work related matters. If the organization have no control

on these tools employees with misuse wikis, blogs etc only for personal and social purpose not

work related issues. Even if companies have control over these factors, it cannot be avoid

completely. Only thing organization can do to minimize this thing to minimum level. According

to Infosys manager, employees are highly aware about company disciple policy and

responsibility so only minor problems of this kind were reported in his career time. In survey

about 24 out of 34 employees accepts the statement that “the use of asynchronous

communication methods such as blogs and wikis helps the organization increase productivity and

efficiency.” This shows that a good percent of employees believes that social networking tools

like blogs, wikis etc helped them to increase their productivity rather than the negative side.

The graph shows the reply of employees for and against the statement that social networking

improves the productivity inside the organization. The blue bar shows employees favor to the

statement and green indicates the negative reply. It is clear from the graph that positive side is

considerably high when comparing negative and neutral side.

4.3.4 Knowledge management

Next important criticism about social networking in business is about knowledge management

and its control inside the organization. In social networking tools like wikis, blogs etc, and

knowledge is created not in a controlled hierarchical manner. Anybody in the social network can

publish knowledge and information, edit, remove and update content, no matter how much

experience and knowledge they got. So the reliability of knowledge and information cannot be

ensured like previous systems. In previous system information and knowledge were generated

and communicated by specialist staffs through one to many communication modes.

Consequences due to miss information and vandalism may be serious some time, and can affect

productivity as well as profitability of the organization. In Infosys, the social networking features

are made available to the employees through proper authenticated channels with their proper

identification information. Employees are fully responsible for their activities inside the network

with respect to company conditions so that deliberate miss uses of knowledge management tools

are avoided. Even though there is an inconsistent threat exists if the employees are not aware

about their mistake. This strengthens the statement of ClearSwift (2007) “Employer are

responsible for negligent acts or omissions by their employees in the course of their work, even

if those acts are accidental”.

4.3.5 Confidentiality

The social networking tool provides the features like social book marking, link, tagging etc so

that employees can share information. But employers are concerned about the loss of potential

and confidential information though this features. Any unguarded links, tags or book marking of

the employee can could lead to the security risk. This can possibly lead to financial damage,

security risks or even legal liabilities. But in Infosys, all social networking tools are internal to

the organization. Employees inside the organization cannot link, tag or book mark information to

outside the organization. According to the Manger, employees cannot not even access to their

company account from their home connection. This strengthens the security of confidential

information inside the organization. So Infosys security risk for losing potential and confidential

information through social networking tools is considerably small.

4.3.6 Other threats

One of the major concerns about social network in an organization was the fact that most of the

internal social network system will not correspond to organizational hierarchy and charts. This

aspect can lead to undermine command and results in inappropriate behavior inside the

organization. This may also impact the reputation of the organization. In order to overcome this

concern most of the software development organization implements strict strategies like pre

approved user content in the social network, control on use of language inside the network and

abusive behavior. Infosys also have same strict concern and control over the social media

network to maintain the social communication to controllable state. This is maintained by

appropriate project manager and department heads.

In addition to these major disadvantages, social networking in business also contributes to some

minor problems. First one among this company must take extra effort for maintain high

contribution and interaction rate of employees to new tools. For example, some of the employees

may not be interested in blogging at the beginning. To attract maximum employees to the

system, the organization must implement some promotional activities. Organization must spend

extra resources since they committed to manage social media presence inside the organization

for employee freedom and fun. Special effort must be taken to regulate the system especially

respond to the feedbacks, security measures, new content creation etc. In most of the

organization implementation new advanced system and change management needs high initial

investment, it is difficult for quantify the return of investment of the new system over another. In

the case of Infosys, since company itself in the field of software development and IT the cost of

investment is low. According to the Manager , Infosys have a special team for the development,

updating and maintenance of all integrated and collaborative system in software engineering

environment which includes ,work flow management system, social networking , knowledge

management system. Responsibility of this team is to make an effective software development

environment inside the organization with help , support , knowledge , skills development , fun

and freedom without losing the confidentiality and reputation of the organization. The teams

controls and coordinates the activities and also carry out research and development for upgrading

the current system with new features of technological development.