Alignment Practices Affect Distances in Software Development: A Theory and a Model
Author
Summary, in English
Coordinating a software project across distances is challenging. Even without geographical and time zone distances, other distances within a project can cause communication gaps. For example, organisational and cognitive distances between product owners and development-near roles such as developers and testers can lead to weak alignment of the software and the business requirements. Applying good software development practices, known to enhance alignment, can alleviate these challenges. We present a theoretical model called the Gap Model of how alignment practices affect different types of distances. This model has been inductively generated from empirical data. We also present an initial version of a theory based on this model that explains, at a general level, how practices affect communication within a project by impacting distances between people, activities and artefacts. The presented results provide a basis for further research and can be used by software organisations to improve on software practice.
Department/s
Publishing year
2014
Language
English
Pages
21-31
Publication/Series
GTSE 2014 Proceedings of the 3rd SEMAT Workshop on General Theories of Software Engineering
Full text
- Available as PDF - 607 kB
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Document type
Conference paper
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Topic
- Computer Science
Keywords
- Management
- Requirements/Specifications
- Software/Program Verification
- Theory
- Human factors
- Documentation
- empirical
- software engineering
- development
- distance
Conference name
3rd Semat Workshop on General Theories of Software Engineering (GTSE14)
Conference date
2014-06-02
Conference place
Hyderabad, India
Status
Published
Project
- Embedded Applications Software Engineering
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 978-1-4503-2850-0