The Study Of Socio Technical Coordination Using A Socio Technical Congruence Model

The Study of Socio-technical Coordination Using A Socio-technical Congruence Model

The Study of Socio-technical Coordination Using a Socio-technical Congruence Model

Coordination in software development, especially in global software development, is important because a team cannot perform well unless its team members communicate and maintain awareness of each other's activities. In order to improve socio-technical coordination, which is coordination among team members who work on interdependent technical entities, it must be conceptualized and measured. One measurement of coordination is socio-technical congruence, which calculates the alignment between technical relationships and social relationships. The problem is that there are a large number of social and technical factors to consider when using socio-technical congruence to study coordination. Current limitations with socio-technical congruence include the inability to represent the size of gaps in coordination between people, the sparse understanding of the role of awareness in conjunction with other coordination mechanisms, and the lack of a technique with which to model people who are involved in certain communication patterns, but not assigned to technical tasks. To address these limitations, this dissertation describes a socio-technical congruence model to study socio-technical coordination. The model focuses on refining conceptualizations of technical and social relationships between people, on describing an improved gap technique for calculating socio-technical alignment, and on providing guidelines on how to study coordination in teams using the socio-technical congruence model. I first develop the model theoretically from related work. I then conduct two empirical investigations to address limitations of the model. The first study examines awareness in a small global team using observational studies. The second study examines important communicators and people who emerge in coordination} despite having no technical relationships by examining email archives from the same team. I conduct a third empirical investigation of a large global team to apply the model to study the relationship between socio-technical congruence and team performance using the project's repository. Finally, I revisit the model and improve it based on the empirical findings. The model refines conceptualizations of relationships, classifies emergent people who are suddenly involved with a task or a team during the project, and represents multi-variable relationships. It includes a template and an accompanying process for applying socio-technical congruence to study socio-technical coordination. This model enables researchers to study socio-technical coordination and analyze its effect on software engineering outcomes such as performance and quality.

Model-Driven Software Engineering in Practice

This book discusses how model-based approaches can improve the daily practice of software professionals. This is known as Model-Driven Software Engineering (MDSE) or, simply, Model-Driven Engineering (MDE). MDSE practices have proved to increase efficiency and effectiveness in software development, as demonstrated by various quantitative and qualitative studies. MDSE adoption in the software industry is foreseen to grow exponentially in the near future, e.g., due to the convergence of software development and business analysis. The aim of this book is to provide you with an agile and flexible tool to introduce you to the MDSE world, thus allowing you to quickly understand its basic principles and techniques and to choose the right set of MDSE instruments for your needs so that you can start to benefit from MDSE right away. The book is organized into two main parts. The first part discusses the foundations of MDSE in terms of basic concepts (i.e., models and transformations), driving principles, application scenarios and current standards, like the well-known MDA initiative proposed by OMG (Object Management Group) as well as the practices on how to integrate MDSE in existing development processes. The second part deals with the technical aspects of MDSE, spanning from the basics on when and how to build a domain-specific modeling language, to the description of Model-to-Text and Model-to-Model transformations, and the tools that support the management of MDSE projects. The book is targeted to a diverse set of readers, spanning: professionals, CTOs, CIOs, and team managers that need to have a bird's eye vision on the matter, so as to take the appropriate decisions when it comes to choosing the best development techniques for their company or team; software analysts, developers, or designers that expect to use MDSE for improving everyday work productivity, either by applying the basic modeling techniques and notations or by defining new domain-specific modeling languages and applying end-to-end MDSE practices in the software factory; and academic teachers and students to address undergrad and postgrad courses on MDSE. In addition to the contents of the book, more resources are provided on the book's website, including the examples presented in the book. Table of Contents: Introduction / MDSE Principles / MDSE Use Cases / Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) / Integration of MDSE in your Development Process / Modeling Languages at a Glance / Developing your Own Modeling Language / Model-to-Model Transformations / Model-to-Text Transformations / Managing Models / Summary