Examining life at the code face
Authors: 
Gabriela Avram, 
Liam J. Bannon, Anne Sheehan, Anders Sigfridsson, 
Daniel K. SullivanAuthors Info & Claims
Pages 5 - 8
Abstract
In this paper, we present the work of a research team at the University of Limerick, Ireland, focusing on work practices in a distributed software development environment. Adopting ethnographically-informed methods, the researchers have observed the activity of a software development team from an Irish subsidiary of a multinational company over a period of 18 months. The paper presents our perspective on the existing literature, the theoretical foundations of our work, and the approach we have taken. This research work is ongoing and in this paper we provide a selection of vignettes which the authors found of interest for a deeper analysis. Our aim is to understand the impact of the global distribution of software development on collaborative work practices in this particular work setting.
References
[1]
Avram, G.(2007), Knowledge Work Practices in Global Software Development, Proceedings of the European Conference for Knowledge Management, September 2008, Barcelona, Spain
[2]
Avram, G. Sheehan A., Sullivan D. K.,(2005) "Defect Tracking Systems in Global Software Development-a work practice study", The Challenges of Collaborative Work in Global Software Development Workshop - in conjunction with ECSCW'07, 25 Sept 2007, Limerick, Ireland
[3]
Damian, D. and D. Moirta, Guest Editors' Introduction: Global Software Development: How Far Have We Come? IEEE Sofwtare, 2006. 23(5):p.17--19.
[4]
Dittrich, Y., et al., Editorial: For the Special Issue on Qualitative Software Engineering Research. Information and Software Technology, 2007. 49: p. 531--539.
[5]
Dourish, P. (2006) "Implications for Design", Proc. ACM Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2006 (Montreal, Canada), pp. 541--550.
[6]
Herbsleb, J. D., Beyond Computer Science, in International Conference on Software Engineering. 2005: St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
[7]
Robinson, H., J. Segal, and H. Sharp, Ethnographically-informed empirical studies of software practices. Information and Software Technology, 2007. 49:p.540--551.
[8]
Schmidt, K., The critical role of workplace studies in CSCW, in Workplace Studies: Recovering Work Practice and Informing Design, C. Heath, J. Hindmarsh, and P. Luff, Editors. 2000, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Index Terms
- Examining life at the code face
Recommendations
Reflections on 25 Years of Ethnography in CSCW
In this article we focus attention on ethnography's place in CSCW by reflecting on how ethnography in the context of CSCW has contributed to our understanding of the sociality and materiality of work and by exploring how the notion of the `field site' ...
Negotiating Absent Practices and Dormant Features: Discourse as a Means of Shaping the Implementation of a Global Enterprise System to Meet Local Work Culture
CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsThe introduction of a new enterprise system to an organization often necessitates the accommodation of standardized practices, which may be in conflict with local users' practices and their work culture. We explore such a conflict in an India-based ...
The mystery of the missing referent: objects, procedures, and the problem of the instruction follower
CSCW '06: Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative workAn omni-relevant issue for workplace studies is how participants engaged in joint activity make sense of the objects that constitute their shared material environment. In this study we examine a surgery taped in a teaching hospital to explore how formal ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
May 2008
120 pages
ISBN:9781605580395
DOI:10.1145/1370114
Copyright © 2008 ACM.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
Sponsors
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 13 May 2008
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
Conference
Acceptance Rates
CHASE '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 34 submissions, 82%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 47 of 70 submissions, 67%
Upcoming Conference
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 228Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)16
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 14 Dec 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in