The geography of coordination: dealing with distance in R&D work

ABSTRACT

Geographically distributed development creates new questions about how to coordinate multi-site work. In this paper, we present four methods product development organizations used to coordinate their work: functional areas of expertise, product structure, process steps, and customization. We describe the benefits and difficulties with each model. Finally, we discuss two difficulties that occur irrespective of the model used: consequences of unequal distribution of project mass, and finding expertise.

REFERENCES

• 1: Mark J. Abel, Experiences in an exploratory distributed organization, Intellectual teamwork: social and technological foundations of cooperative work, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 1990
• 2: Allen, T.J., Managing the Flow of Technology. 1977, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• 3: Allen, T.J. and O. Hauptman. The Influence of Communication Technologies on Organisational Structure: A Conceptual Model for Future Research. Communication Research 14, 5, 1987, 575-587.
• 4: Cairncross, F., The Death of Distance" How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives. 1997, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School.
• 5: Carmel, E., Global Software Teams. 1999, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• 6: Conway, M.E. How Do Committees Invent? Datamation 14, 4, 1968, 28-31.
• 7: Bill Curtis , Herb Krasner , Neil Iscoe, A field study of the software design process for large systems, Communications of the ACM, v.31 n.11, p.1268-1287, Nov. 1988 [doi>10.1145/50087.50089]
• 8: Paul Dourish , Sara Bly, Portholes: supporting awareness in a distributed work group, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.541-547, May 03-07, 1992, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/142750.142982]
• 9: Fish, R.S. Cruiser: A multi-media system for social browsing. The A CM SIGGRAPH Video Review Supplement to Computer Graphics 45, 6, 1989.
• 10: Rebecca E. Grinter, From workplace to development: what have we learned so far and where do we go?, Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work: the integration challenge, p.231-240, November 16-19, 1997, Phoenix, Arizona, United States [doi>10.1145/266838.266917]
• 11: James D. Herbsleb , Rebecca E. Grinter, Conceptual simplicity meets organizational complexity: case study of a corporate metrics program, Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Software engineering, p.271-280, April 19-25, 1998, Kyoto, Japan
• 12: James D. Herbsleb , Rebecca E. Grinter, Splitting the organization and integrating the code: Conway's law revisited, Proceedings of the 21st international conference on Software engineering, p.85-95, May 16-22, 1999, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/302405.302455]
• 13: Robert E. Kraut , Carmen Egido , Jolene Galegher, Patterns of contact and communication in scientific research collaborations, Intellectual teamwork: social and technological foundations of cooperative work, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 1990
• 14: Robert E. Kraut , Lynn A. Streeter, Coordination in software development, Communications of the ACM, v.38 n.3, p.69-81, March 1995 [doi>10.1145/203330.203345]
• 15: David W. McDonald , Mark S. Ackerman, Just talk to me: a field study of expertise location, Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.315-324, November 14-18, 1998, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/289444.289506]
• 16: Judith S. Olson , Stephanie Teasley, Groupware in the wild: lessons learned from a year of virtual collocation, Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.419-427, November 16-20, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/240080.240353]
• 17: D. L. Parnas, On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules, Communications of the ACM, v.15 n.12, p.1053-1058, Dec. 1972 [doi>10.1145/361598.361623]
• 18: Dewayne E. Perry, The inscape environment, Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Software engineering, p.2-11, May 1989, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/74587.74588]
• 19: Dewayne E. Perry , Nancy Staudenmayer , Lawrence G. Votta, People, Organizations, and Process Improvement, IEEE Software, v.11 n.4, p.36-45, July 1994 [doi>10.1109/52.300082]
• 20: Kjeld Schmidt, Of maps and scripts—the status of formal constructs in cooperative work, Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work: the integration challenge, p.138-147, November 16-19, 1997, Phoenix, Arizona, United States [doi>10.1145/266838.266887]
• 21: Schmidt, K. and L. Bannon. Taking CSCW Seriously: Supporting Articulation Work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) : An International Journal 1, 1-2, 1992, 7-40.
• 22: Lucy A. Suchman, Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1987

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Theory

Keywords:
collaborative work, coordination mechanisms, geographically distributed development