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Articulation spaces: bridging the gap between formal and informal coordination

Published: 15 February 2014 Publication History

Abstract

The high complexity of knowledge-intensive work such as software development makes it beneficial to have spaces for formal and informal articulation work. Existing information systems (IS) tend to treat these different aspects of coordination separately, resulting in problems of awareness and coordination. To bridge this gap, we present the concept of Articulation Spaces which combines aspects of Coordination Mechanisms and Common Information Spaces (CIS) in order to provide a room for mediating between the formal and informal aspects of coordination. Based on a design study in the form of a lightweight public display that has been tested in a medium-sized German software company, we show how Articulation Spaces provide information for meta-coordination, encourage ad-hoc coordination and support decision-making processes. Our findings provide insights into the design of support systems for flexible and coordination-intensive contexts such as software development work.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
    February 2014
    1600 pages
    ISBN:9781450325400
    DOI:10.1145/2531602
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    Published: 15 February 2014

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    Author Tags

    1. articulation work
    2. common information spaces
    3. coordination
    4. coordination mechanism
    5. formal and informal communication
    6. lightweight displays
    7. small companies
    8. software development

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    February 15 - 19, 2014
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    • (2023)Implicit bias and negative stereotyping in global software development and why it is time to move on!Journal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.243535:5Online publication date: 25-Apr-2023
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