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Collaboration, Communication and Co-ordination in Agile Software Development Practice

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Collaborative Software Engineering

Abstract

This chapter analyses the results of a series of observational studies of agile software development teams, identifying commonalities in collaboration, co-ordination and communication activities. Pairing and customer collaboration are focussed on to illustrate the nature of collaboration and communication, as are two simple physical artefacts that emerged through analysis as being an information-rich focal point for the co-ordination of collaboration and communication activities. The analysis shows that pairing has common characteristics across all teams, while customer collaboration differs between the teams depending on the application and organisational context of development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Time-boxed units of development lasting 1–4 weeks are called “iteration’s” in XP; time-boxed units of development around four weeks are called “sprints” in Scrum.

  2. 2.

    cf. Edwin Hutchins’ Cognition in the Wild, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995.

  3. 3.

    Transitioning to XP is a process that can take place over a weekend or can require several months, depending on a range of factors such as team size, organizational culture and team member attitude, for example.

  4. 4.

    We have observed pairings of a developer with a graphic designer, and a developer with a business analyst.

  5. 5.

    Such italicized, bracketed material, in quotes, is an illustrative extract from our field notes.

  6. 6.

    Software is released after a series of iterations, typically every few months. There is a layer of release planning, which helps scope out the functionality of an iteration that we have not touched on here.

  7. 7.

    All actions that involve a card are carried out with a care that transcends its deceptive simplicity and informality. Indeed, one team studied had an internal wiki entry entitled “The care and feeding of story cards.”

  8. 8.

    Collective ownership is part of the technical practice of XP: “Anybody who sees an opportunity to add value to any portion of the code is required to do so at any time.” [3: 59].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Research in Computing, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

    Hugh Robinson & Helen Sharp

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  1. Hugh Robinson
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  2. Helen Sharp
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Correspondence to Hugh Robinson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Werderstr. 47, Heidelberg, 69120, Germany

    Ivan Mistrík

  2. Dept. Computer Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    John Grundy

  3. Donald Bren School of Information &, University of California, Irvine, Donald Bren Hall 5029, Irvine, 92697-3440, USA

    André Hoek

  4. Dept. Computer Science, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, 95064, USA

    Jim Whitehead

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Robinson, H., Sharp, H. (2010). Collaboration, Communication and Co-ordination in Agile Software Development Practice. In: Mistrík, I., Grundy, J., Hoek, A., Whitehead, J. (eds) Collaborative Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10294-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10294-3_5

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