The role of domain knowledge and cross-functional communication in socio-technical coordination

• Published in: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Software Engineering pp. 442 - 451
• Main Authors: Damian, Daniela, Helms, Remko, Kwan, Irwin, Marczak, Sabrina, Koelewijn, Benjamin
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway, NJ, USA IEEE Press 18.05.2013
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Social and professional topics > Professional topics > Management of computing and information systems > Project and people management; Software and its engineering > Software creation and management > Designing software; Software and its engineering > Software creation and management > Designing software > Requirements analysis; Software and its engineering > Software creation and management > Software development process management; Software and its engineering > Software notations and tools > Software configuration management and version control systems
• ISBN: 1467330760; 9781467330763
• DOI: 10.5555/2486788.2486847

Software projects involve diverse roles and artifacts that have dependencies to requirements. Project team members in different roles need to coordinate but their coordination is affected by the availability of domain knowledge, which is distributed among different project members, and organizational structures that control cross-functional communication. Our study examines how information flowed between different roles in two software projects that had contrasting distributions of domain knowledge and different communication structures. Using observations, interviews, and surveys, we examined how diverse roles working on requirements and their related artifacts coordinated along task dependencies. We found that communication only partially matched task dependencies and that team members that are boundary spanners have extensive domain knowledge and hold key positions in the control structure. These findings have implications on how organizational structures interfere with task assignments and influence communication in the project, suggesting how practitioners can adjust team configuration and communication structures.