Lightweight Process Documentation: Just Enough Structure in Automotive Pre-development

Communication is a key success factor of distributed software projects. Poor communication has been identified as a main obstacle to successful collaboration. Global projects are especially endangered by information gaps between collaborating sites. Different communication styles, technical equipment, and missing awareness of each other can cause severe problems. Knowledge about actual and desired channels, paths, and modes of communication is required for improving communication in a globally distributed project. However, many project participants know little about communication and information flow in their projects. In this contribution, we focus on knowledge about communication and information flow. It is acquired by modelling on‐going and desired flows of information, including documented and non‐documented channels of information flow. We analyzed a distributed software project from the information flow perspective. Based on the findings, we developed specific techniques to improve information flow in distributed software development according to the FLOW Method. In a second distributed project, we evaluated one of the techniques. We found the FLOW mapping technique to be suitable for effectively spreading knowledge about communication and information flow in global software projects.

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Section: Flow Fundamental Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing knowledge on communication and information flow in global software projects

Stapel

Schneider

2014

Expert Systems

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“…As a first approximation the number of observation packages that mention problems related to missing context, missing awareness, or missing documentation can be used. In addition, observers that are trained in FLOW analysis can be sent to each development location, or already present developers can be quickly trained before project start [10] to capture the relevant information flows remotely. A combination of a survey based approach [10] and Social Network Analysis [9] could be used to measure team awareness.…”

Section: Qip-23 Choose Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although quite a few contributions found informal communication to be a main driver of (global) software projects [1,2,5,[7][8][9], not many approaches have been proposed to explicitly take informal, verbal, or ad-hoc communication into account. But, especially at project start, when distributed teams still grow together and requirements are unclear, these types of communication are very common [1,5,7,10] and thus should be analyzed and optimized.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using FLOW to Improve Communication of Requirements in Globally Distributed Software Projects

Stapel

Knauss

Schneider

2009

2009 Collaboration and Intercultural Issues on Requirements: Communication, Understanding and Softskills

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Effective communication of requirements is essential in all software projects. In distributed projects communication faces even more and bigger challenges due to the narrow communication channels that are available. Applying information theory and information flow concepts as provided by FLOW to process improvement can help to overcome challenges associated with communication of requirements in global software projects. We participated in a software project distributed over three locations in three time zones. To test the feasibility of our FLOW perspective we analyzed the projects information flows. We found communication problems that are typical in a global context. Based on FLOW theory we developed three new suggestions to overcome these problems. Finally, we present a measurement approach that can be used to evaluate our suggestions in future global projects.

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“…Some of these requirements, like the visual distinction between solid and fluid, led to the creation of a new notation instead of reusing DFDs. Very simple but flexible notations were most appropriate wherever we used information flow analysis so far (Schneider, 2004;Schneider & Lübke, 2005;Stapel et al, 2007Stapel et al, , 2008Stapel et al, , 2009Schneider et al, 2008). Table 1 summarizes the symbols that satisfy the mentioned requirements and form the graphical FLOW notation.…”

Section: The Graphical Flow Notationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing knowledge on communication and information flow in global software projects

Stapel

Schneider

2012

Expert Systems

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Communication is a key success factor of distributed software projects. Poor communication has been identified as a main obstacle to successful collaboration. Global projects are especially endangered by information gaps between collaborating sites. Different communication styles, technical equipment, and missing awareness of each other can cause severe problems. Knowledge about actual and desired channels, paths, and modes of communication is required for improving communication in a globally distributed project. However, many project participants know little about communication and information flow in their projects. In this contribution, we focus on knowledge about communication and information flow. It is acquired by modelling on-going and desired flows of information, including documented and non-documented channels of information flow. We analyzed a distributed software project from the information flow perspective. Based on the findings, we developed specific techniques to improve information flow in distributed software development according to the FLOW Method. In a second distributed project, we evaluated one of the techniques. We found the FLOW mapping technique to be suitable for effectively spreading knowledge about communication and information flow in global software projects.

show abstract

Lightweight Process Documentation: Just Enough Structure in Automotive Pre-development

Cited by 11 publications

References 4 publications

Managing knowledge on communication and information flow in global software projects

Managing knowledge on communication and information flow in global software projects

Using FLOW to Improve Communication of Requirements in Globally Distributed Software Projects

Managing knowledge on communication and information flow in global software projects

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