engineering software engineering teams - sse 2011
DESCRIPTION
Presentation from the 4th International Workshop on Social Software Engineering on "Engineering Software Engineering Teams".TRANSCRIPT
Engineering Software Engineering Teams
Patrick WagstromIBM TJ Watson Research Center
Presented at SSE’11 – September 5, 2011
2
What Does an Organization Do?
Info
Can I act on this?
Alice
Bob
Carl
Bob, can you help me here?
Here’s the nugget of info
you need.
Maybe Carl can help.
More Info
MAGIC!
September 5, 2011
3
Hey! You Got Economics in my Software Engineering!
Keynesian Austrian
September 5, 2011
4
I am not an EconomistKeynesian Austrian
(nor do I play one on TV)
Knowledge flows down Knowledge flows up
September 5, 2011
5
What about Software Engineering?
September 5, 2011
6
Solutions?
• Developer tools!– Bugzilla– SCM– Mailing lists
• Integrated Tools– Rational Team Concert– GitHub
September 5, 2011
7
What about Software Engineering?
September 5, 2011
8
What We Did
• Interviewed numerous developers, architects, managers, executives, etc
• Part of a larger project to build tools to support the complete software delivery process
September 5, 2011
9
General Findings
• Projects had tried to work bottom up or top down, but failed
• Often time there was one important cog• This person was well known– Not necessarily established rank– Significant pull with external stakeholders– Knowledge of the process
• We call this person an intercessor
September 5, 2011
10
Where it Gets Messy…
• Sometimes managers were not aware of what intercessor did
• Sometimes developers were not aware of what intercessor did
• Intercessor may leave the organization and no one may know
• Is there a way to empirically discover the intercessor?
September 5, 2011