TY - Generic T1 - Work features to support stigmergic coordination in distributed teams Y1 - 2017 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - James Howison A1 - Bolici, Francesco A1 - Carsten Østerlund KW - Coordination KW - Stigmergy AB -

When work products are shared via a computer system, members of distributed teams can see the work products produced by remote colleagues as easily as those from local colleagues. Drawing on coordination theory and work in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), we theorize that these work products can provide information to support team coordination, that is, that work can be coordinated through the outcome of the work itself, a mode of coordination analogous to the biological process of stigmergy. Based on studies of documents and work, we postulate three features of work products that enable them to support team coordination, namely having a clear genre, being visible and mobile, and being combinable. These claims are illustrated with examples drawn from free/libre open source software development teams. We conclude by discussing how the proposed theory might be empirically tested.

JF - Academy of Management Annual Meeting ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Stigmergic coordination in FLOSS development teams: Integrating explicit and implicit mechanisms JF - Cognitive Systems Research Y1 - 2016 A1 - Bolici, Francesco A1 - James Howison A1 - Kevin Crowston KW - Coordination KW - Stigmergy VL - 38 ER - TY - Generic T1 - The under-appreciated role of stigmergic coordination in software development Y1 - 2010 A1 - Bolici, Francesco A1 - James Howison A1 - Kevin Crowston KW - Coordination KW - FLOSS KW - Stigmergy AB -

Coordination in software development teams has been a topic of perennial interest in empirical software engineering research. The vast majority of this literature has drawn on a conceptual separation between work and coordination mechanisms, separate from the work itself, which enable groups to achieve coordination. Traditional recommendations and software methods focused on planning: using analysis to predict and manage dependencies. Empirical research has demonstrated the limits of this approach, showing that many important dependencies are emergent and pointing to the persistent importance of explicit discussion to managing these dependencies as they arise. Drawing on work in Computer-Supported Collaborative Work and building from an analogy to collaboration amongst insects (stigmergy), we argue that the work product itself plays an under-appreciated role in helping software developers manage dependencies as they arise. This short paper presents the conceptual argument with empirical illustrations and explains why this mechanism would have significant implications for Software Engineering coordination research. We discuss issues in marshaling clear positive evidence, arguing that these issues are responsible, in part, for the under-consideration of this mechanism in software engineering and outlining research strategies which may overcome these issues.

ER -