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research-article

Functional organization of software groups considered harmful

Author:

Rob FullerAuthors Info & Claims

ICSSP '19: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software and System Processes

Pages 120 - 124

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSSP.2019.00024

Published: 25 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Many software organisations are grouped functionally, i.e., functions such as software engineering, design, product management, etc. are organised into separate groups, with cross-functional teams assembled from across these groups to form product or feature teams. While conducting a Grounded Theory study into the ability of cross-functional software product teams to collectively grok the context of product requirements, we encountered individual and team dynamics that appear to be strongly linked to the software development organisational structure. We argue that an over-arching functional structure of a software development organisation causes cross-functional software product teams to exhibit counter-productive behaviours and that the effectiveness of these cross-functional product or feature teams is significantly compromised as a result of an overarching functional structure.

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Cited By

Buchner SRiehle D(2023)The Business Impact of Inner Source and How to Quantify ItACM Computing Surveys10.1145/361164856:2(1-27)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611648
Yildirim NPushkarna MGoyal NWattenberg MViégas F(2023)Investigating How Practitioners Use Human-AI Guidelines: A Case Study on the People + AI GuidebookProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580900(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580900
Fuller RKruchten P(2022)Blurring boundariesInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106670140:COnline publication date: 22-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106670
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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSSP '19: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software and System Processes

May 2019

181 pages

General Chair:
Stanley M Sutton,
Program Chairs:
Ove Armbrust,
Regina Hebig

Sponsors

SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS: Computer Society

Publisher

IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 25 May 2019

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ICSE '19

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT
IEEE-CS

ICSE '19: 41st International Conference on Software Engineering

May 25, 2019

Quebec, Montreal, Canada

Upcoming Conference

ICSE 2025

2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

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Cited By

Buchner SRiehle D(2023)The Business Impact of Inner Source and How to Quantify ItACM Computing Surveys10.1145/361164856:2(1-27)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611648
Yildirim NPushkarna MGoyal NWattenberg MViégas F(2023)Investigating How Practitioners Use Human-AI Guidelines: A Case Study on the People + AI GuidebookProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580900(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580900
Fuller RKruchten P(2022)Blurring boundariesInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106670140:COnline publication date: 22-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106670
Wolf CPaine D(2020)Sensemaking Practices in the Everyday Work of AI/ML Software EngineeringProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops10.1145/3387940.3391496(86-92)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3387940.3391496
Sutton SArmbrust OHebig RClarke P(2019)Summary of the 2019 International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP 2019)ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes10.1145/3356773.335680344:3(34-37)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3356773.3356803

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