short-paper

Open access

Rethinking coordination in large-scale software development

Authors:

Torgeir Dingsøyr,

Finn Olav Bjørnson,

Nils Brede Moe,

Eva Amdahl SeimAuthors Info & Claims

CHASE '18: Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering

Pages 91 - 92

https://doi.org/10.1145/3195836.3195850

Published: 27 May 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Coordination was early identified as a key challenge in software development, and in particular in large development projects. With the arrival of agile methods and their increasing use also in large-scale projects, this calls for rethinking how the software engineering community addresses coordination. We argue for increasing the focus on coordination in software engineering and describe four directions for research. Focus on these areas can supplement advice given in current development methods with relevant research-based advice.

References

[1]

Curtis, B., Krasner, H., and Iscoe, N., "A field study of the software design process for large systems," Communications of the ACM, vol. 31, pp. 1268--1287, 1988.

Digital Library

[2]

Cataldo, M. and Herbsleb, J. D., "Coordination Breakdowns and Their Impact on Development Productivity and Software Failures," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 39, pp. 343--360, 2013.

Digital Library

[3]

Begel, A., Nagappan, N., Poile, C., and Layman, L., "Coordination in large-scale software teams," in Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects on Software Engineering, 2009, pp. 1--7.

Digital Library

[4]

Malone, T. W. and Crowston, K., "The interdisciplinary study of coordination," ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), vol. 26, pp. 87--119, 1994.

Digital Library

[5]

Okhuysen, G. A. and Bechky, B. A., "Coordination in organizations: An integrative perspective," The Academy of Management Annals, vol. 3, pp. 463--502, 2009.

[6]

Mintzberg, H., Mintzberg on management: Inside our strange world of organizations: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

[7]

Dingsøyr, T., Nerur, S., Balijepally, V., and Moe, N. B., "A Decade of Agile Methodologies: Towards Explaining Agile Software Development," Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 85, pp. 1213--1221, 2012.

Digital Library

[8]

Strode, D. E., Huff, S. L., Hope, B. G., and Link, S., "Coordination in co-located agile software development projects," Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 85, pp. 1222--1238, 2012.

Digital Library

[9]

Rolland, K. H., Fitzgerald, B., Dingsøyr, T., and Stol, K.-J., "Problematizing Agile in the Large: Alternative Assumptions for Large-Scale Agile Development," in International Conference on Information Systems, Dublin, Ireland, 2016.

[10]

Paasivaara, M., Lassenius, C., and Heikkila, V. T., "Inter-team Coordination in Large-Scale Globally Distributed Scrum: Do Scrum-of-Scrums Really Work?," in Proceedings of the ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ed New York: IEEE, 2012, pp. 235--238.

Digital Library

[11]

Bick, S., Spohrer, K., Hoda, R., Scheerer, A., and Heinzl, A., "Coordination Challenges in Large-Scale Software Development: A Case Study of Planning Misalignment in Hybrid Settings," IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, 2017.

[12]

Dingsøyr, T., Moe, N. B., Fægri, T. E., and Seim, E. A., "Exploring Software Development at the Very Large-Scale: A Revelatory Case Study and Research Agenda for Agile Method Adaptation," Empirical Software Engineering, 2017.

[13]

Dingsøyr, T., Moe, N. B., and Seim, E. A., "Coordinating Knowledge Work in Multi-Team Programs: Findings from a Large-Scale Agile Development Program," to appear in Project Management Journal, vol. https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08764, 2018.

[14]

Scheerer, A. and Kude, T., "Exploring Coordination in Large-Scale Agile Software Development: A Multiteam Systems Perspective," in Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, ed, 2014.

[15]

Bjørnson, F. O., Wijnmaalen, J., Stettina, C. J., and Dingsøyr, T., "Inter-team Coordination in Large-Scale Agile Development: A Case Study of Three Enabling Mechanisms," presented at the Submitted to XP2018, 2018.

[16]

Van de Ven, A. H., Delbecq, A. L., and Koenig Jr, R., "Determinants of coordination modes within organizations," American sociological review, pp. 322--338, 1976.

[17]

Salas, E., Sims, D. E., and Burke, S. C., "Is there a "Big five" in teamwork?," Small Group Research, vol. 36, pp. 555--599, 2005.

[18]

Jarzabkowski, P. A., Le, J. K., and Feldman, M. S., "Toward a Theory of Coordinating: Creating Coordinating Mechanisms in Practice," Organization Science, vol. 23, pp. 907--927, Jul-Aug 2012.

Digital Library

Cited By

Dingsøyr TBjørnson FSchrof JSporsem T(2022)A longitudinal explanatory case study of coordination in a very large development programme: the impact of transitioning from a first- to a second-generation large-scale agile development methodEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10230-628:1Online publication date: 8-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-022-10230-6
Morales IClunie-Beaufond CVargas-Lombardo M(2022)Coordination and Flexibility in the Management of Software Development Processes for Start-Up CompaniesApplied Technologies10.1007/978-3-031-03884-6_30(412-425)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-03884-6_30
Ferreira NSantos NPereira JMachado R(2021)Using Logical Architecture Models for Inter-Team Management of Distributed Agile TeamsInternational Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach10.4018/IJITSA.28999615:1(1-17)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/IJITSA.289996
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Rethinking coordination in large-scale software development
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development process management

Recommendations

Inter-Team Coordination in Large Agile Software Development Settings: Five Ways of Practicing Agile at Scale
XP '16 Workshops: Proceedings of the Scientific Workshop Proceedings of XP2016

Scaling agile software development to settings with multiple interconnected teams requires inter-team coordination. We present a multiple case study at one of the world's largest enterprise software vendors, SAP SE, where we analyzed five ways of ...
Deepening Our Understanding of Communities of Practice in Large-Scale Agile Development
AGILE '14: Proceedings of the 2014 Agile Conference

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are groups of experts who share a common interest or topic and collectively want to deepen their knowledge. The use of CoPs is one of the practices that agile practitioner literature suggests for knowledge sharing and ...
Identifying and documenting recurring concerns and best practices of agile coaches and scrum masters in large-scale agile development
PLoP '19: Proceedings of the 26th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs

Ever since the release of the agile manifesto in 2001, agile methods have received widespread interest in industry and academia. Agile methods have transformed and brought unique changes to software development practices by strongly emphasizing team ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHASE '18: Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering

May 2018

136 pages

ISBN:9781450357258

DOI:10.1145/3195836

Conference Chairs:
Helen Sharp
The Open University, United Kingdom
,
Cleidson R. B. de Souza
Universidade Federal do Pará and Instituto Tecnológico Vale, Tv, Brazil
,
Daniel Graziotin
University of Stuttgart, Germany
,
Meira Levy
Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, Israel
,
David Socha
University of Washington Bothell

Copyright © 2018 Owner/Author.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Sponsors

SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS: Computer Society

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 May 2018

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Short-paper

Funding Sources

Research council of Norway

Conference

ICSE '18

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT
IEEE-CS

ICSE '18: 40th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 27, 2018

Gothenburg, Sweden

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 47 of 70 submissions, 67%

Upcoming Conference

ICSE 2025

2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

6
Total Citations
View Citations
861
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)171
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)19

Reflects downloads up to 08 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Dingsøyr TBjørnson FSchrof JSporsem T(2022)A longitudinal explanatory case study of coordination in a very large development programme: the impact of transitioning from a first- to a second-generation large-scale agile development methodEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10230-628:1Online publication date: 8-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-022-10230-6
Morales IClunie-Beaufond CVargas-Lombardo M(2022)Coordination and Flexibility in the Management of Software Development Processes for Start-Up CompaniesApplied Technologies10.1007/978-3-031-03884-6_30(412-425)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-03884-6_30
Ferreira NSantos NPereira JMachado R(2021)Using Logical Architecture Models for Inter-Team Management of Distributed Agile TeamsInternational Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach10.4018/IJITSA.28999615:1(1-17)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/IJITSA.289996
Sablis ASmite DMoe N(2021)Team‐external coordination in large‐scale software development projectsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.229733:3Online publication date: 3-Mar-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.2297
Bjørnson FDingsøyr T(2020)Transitioning from a First Generation to Second Generation Large-Scale Agile Development Method: Towards Understanding Implications for CoordinationAgile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops10.1007/978-3-030-58858-8_9(84-91)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58858-8_9
Berntzen M(2019)Coordination in Large-Scale Agile Software DevelopmentAgile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops10.1007/978-3-030-30126-2_15(123-133)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30126-2_15

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten