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As software development projects continue to be over budget and behind schedule, researchers continue to look for ways to improve the likelihood of project success. In this research we juxtapose two different views of what influences software development team performance during the requirements development phase. In an examination of 66 teams from 15 companies we found that team skill, managerial involvement, and little variance in team experience enable more effective team processes than do software development tools and methods. Further, we found that development teams exhibit both positive and negative boundary-spanning behaviors. Team members promote and champion their projects to the outside environment, which is considered valuable by project stakeholders. They also, however, guard themselves from their environments; keeping important information a secret from stakeholders negatively predicts performance.

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Only a few studies have examined the relationship between influence tactics and objectives, and the results were inconsistent. The present study employed two different research methods to determine how often people use nine influence tactics to attain five influence objectives with subordinates, peers, and superiors. One method was a survey on which managers reported their use of each tactic for each type of objective. The other method was a content analysis of incidents in which influence attempts in a variety of organizations were described from the perspective of the agent or target. The results showed that managers seek different things from subordinates, peers, and superiors. A different pattern of influence tactics was used for each type of influence objective, and the pattern varied by direction. Implications for managers were discussed.

His research focuses on how people work together and how they use technology. Present research includes investigating how software development can be improved through attending to the social aspects of working together and the differences between packaged and custom software development. He has published in Computer Personnel,