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ABSTRACT
The literature recognizes two group structures for managing programming projects: Baker's chief programmer team and Weinberg's egoless team. Although each structure's success in project management can be demonstrated, this success is clearly dependent on the type of programming task undertaken. Here, for the purposes of comparison, a third project organization which lies between the other two in its communication patterns and dissemination of decision-making authority is presented. Recommendations are given for selecting one of the three team organizations depending on the task to be performed.
REFERENCES
Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.
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Baker, F.T. Chief programmer team management of production programming. IBM Syst. J. 1 (1972), 57-73. Baker presents a case history of a program project management organization, the chief programmer team. This compact management strategy coupled with top-down program development methods achieves above average success in terms of productivity and error-free code.
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Basili, V.R., and Reiter, R.W., Jr. The investigation of human factors in software development. Comptr. 12, 12 (Dec. 1979), 21-38. This paper examines the impact of a programming team's size and program development approach, disciplined or ad hoc, on the software product. The disciplined method resulted in major savings in development efficiency and smaller groups built larger code modules.
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Bavelas, A. Communication patterns in task-oriented groups. J. Acoustical Soc. America 22 (1950), 725-730. Bavelas describes an experiment in which the communication structures of a circle, wheel, and chain were imposed on small groups by the physical arrangement of cubicles and message slots. Each structure was then measured for its problem-solving efficiency.
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Becker, H. Vitalizing sociological theory. Amer. Sociological Rev. 19 (1954), 377-388. Becker refers to the small group laboratory studies as "cage studies" and recommends their use by sociological theorists only for an awareness of such studies' limiting conditions.
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Bem, D.J., Wallace, M.A., and Kogen, N. Group decision making under risk of adversive consequences../. Personality and Social Psyehol. 1 (1965), 453-460. This paper demonstrates, in a context of adversive consequences (loss of money, induced nausea, etc.), that unanimous group decisions concerning matters of risk shift toward greater risk-taking than individual decisions. Moreover, the authors provide evidence that the underlying process for the risky shift is a diffusion of the responsibility among group members.
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Cartwright, D., and Zander, D., Eds. Group Dynamics: Research and Theory. 3rd edition, Harper and Row, N.Y., 1968. This serves as an excellent compendium of the spurt of group dynamics research activity in the late 1950s which laid the groundwork for what we know about group behavior today.
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Cave, W.C., and Salisbury, A.B. Controlling the software life cycle--The project management task. 1EEE Trans. Soft. Engr. SE-4, 4 (July 1978), 326-334. This paper describes project management methods for controlling the life cycle of large software systems distributed to multiple users. It emphasizes responding to user satisfaction and user requirements and suggests methods to establish and maintain control in an extended dynamic environment.
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De Roze, B.C., and Nyman, T.H. The soft(rare life cycle--A management and technological challenge in the department of defense. IEEE Trans. Soft. Engr. SE-4, 4 (July 1978), 309-318. De Roze and Nyman describe the software life cycle management policy and practices that have been established by the Department of Defense for improving the software development process.
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Deutsch, M. The effects of cooperation and competition upon group process. Human Relations 2 (1949), 129-152, 199-231. Deutsch describes an experiment which establishes two forms of group relationships, cooperative and competitive. Besides better communication, increased orderliness and higher productivity result when the cooperative group relationship exists.
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Goldberg, S.C. Influence an d leadership as a function of group structure. J. Abnormal and Social Psychol. 51 (1955), 119-122. The experiment described in this paper compares group influence on group members in three organization structures: a star, a fork, and a chain. Individuals holding central positions were influenced less than other group members.
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Guetzkow, H., and Simon, H.A. The impact of certain communication nets upon organization and performance in task-oriented groups. Mgmt. Sci. 1 (1955), 233-250. The authors establish three communication structures: all-channel, wheel, and circle; they then examine their effect on solving a relatively simple communication problem. The restrictions of the wheel organization aided the solution process, whereas those of the circle hindered it. The lack of restrictions in the all-channel case also hurt the solution process.
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Jensen, R.W., and Tonies, C.C., Eds. Software Engineering. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1979. Here, several breakdowns of what constitutes a software life cycle are presented. The authors indicate that if the customer-use phase is included in this breakdown, the time spent on the code development constitutes a relatively small portion of the project.
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Leavitt, H.J. Some effects of certain communication patterns on group performance. J. Abnormal and Social Psychol. 46 (1951), 38-50. Leavitt compares problemsolving effectiveness in both wheel and circle communication structures. The wheel structure was faster but the circle structure accounted for fewer errors.
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Lott, A.J., and Lott, B.E. Group cohesiveness, communication level, and conformity. J. Abnormal and Social Psychol. 62 (1961), 408-412. This paper describes an experiment in which groups were scored on cohesiveness and then tallied for the amount of communication generated in a discussion session. Highly cohesive groups communicated more.
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March, J.G., and Simon, H.A. Organizations. Wiley, New York, 1958. March and Simon focus on the members of formal organizations as rational men. From this, they point out that the basic features of organizational structure and function derive from characteristics of the human problem-solving process and rational choice.
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Mills, H.D. Chief programmer teams: Principles and procedures. IBM Rep. FSC 71-5108, IBM Fed. Syst. Div., Gaithersburg, Md., 1971. Mills suggests that the large team approach to programming projects could eventually be replaced by smaller, tightly organized and functionally specialized teams led by a chief programmer.
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Rogers, E.M., and Agarwala-Rogers, R. Communication in Organizations. Free Press, N.Y., t976. The basic research on group structures in small group network communication is summarized and critiqued in a thoroughly readable manner.
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Schachter, S. Deviation, rejection and communication. J. Abnormal and Social Psychol. 46 (1951), 190-207. This article describes an experiment in which three group members were paid to respectively 1) deviate from, 2) follow, and 3) change over to the group position taken on an issue. Groups with high cohesiveness scores produced greater rejection only of the deviant individual.
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Shaw, M.E. Some effects of unequal distribution of information upon group performance in various communication nets. J. Abnormal and Social Psychol. 49 (1954), 547- 553. In this paper, the amount of independence and, thus, individual satisfaction are examined in various group structures. Low centralization in groups led to member satisfaction.
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Shaw, M.E., and Blum, J.M. Effects of leadership styles upon performance as a function of task structure. J. Personality and Social Psychol. 3 (1966), 238-242. Shaw and Blum describe an experiment in which they manipulated the leadership of two groups to be nondirective or directive. Given three tasks of varying solution multiplicity, directive leadership performed best with low multiplicity tasks.
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Shaw, M.E. Group Dynamics: The Psychology of Small Group Behavior. McGraw- Hill, N.Y., 1971.
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Shneiderman, B. Software Psychology. Winthrop, Cambridge, Mass., 1980. Shneiderman discusses the good and bad points of the Weinberg and Baker teams and a third conventional team. He notes that an egoless team may be difficult to maintain and a competent chief programmer hard to find, concluding that the currently existing conventional organization has strong chances for successful projects--especially with a competent manager.
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Taylor, D.W., and Faust, W.L. Twenty questions: Efficiency of problem solving as a function of the size of the group. J. Experimental Psychol. 44 (1952), 360-363. Taylor compares individual problem-solving to group problem-solving in a game of 20 questions. Even after several days of practice, groups of two and four individuals asked less questions to discover an answer than sole participants.
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Thayer, R.H., Pyster, A., and Wood, R.C. The challenge of software engineering project management. Comptr. 13, 8 (Aug. 1980), 51-59. The three authors report on a survey of software project management experts who were asked to indicate the most important issues facing software engineering. The structure of programming projects was rated as unimportant; planning received the highest ratings.
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Thibaut, J.W., and Kelley, H.H. The Social Psychology of Groups. Wiley, N.Y., 1959. The second section of this book presents a general theory for group formation and group dynamics--in particular, the status systems within groups, conformity requirements, group goal setting behaviors, and the roles played by individuals within the group. In all, not light reading for the nonsociologist.
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