TY - JOUR
T1 - Using agents to manage Socio-Technical Congruence in a Global Software Engineering project
AU - Portillo-Rodríguez, Javier
AU - Vizcaíno, Aurora
AU - Piattini, Mario
AU - Beecham, Sarah
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - In Global Software Engineering (GSE) there are a number of communication and coordination challenges which are brought about by the factor of distance. Measuring Socio-Technical Congruence (STC) is, however, presented as a suitable technique for helping to resolve those issues. This leads us to believe that applying STC measurements to GSE might be beneficial, improving communication and coordination. However, after studying existing tools that use STC measurements, we detected some gaps, both in the way they measure STC and in the features offered by the tools for the GSE environment. That is why we have designed an Agent Architecture for coordination and communication that aims to fill the gaps found in the current tools and includes features adapted to GSE characteristics. This is achieved by taking advantage of the special features that agents offer. Moreover, this proposal has been validated in a case study performed at Indra Software Labs, a global software development company. Results show that, by using our proposal, it is possible to improve coordination and communication in a distributed environment.
AB - In Global Software Engineering (GSE) there are a number of communication and coordination challenges which are brought about by the factor of distance. Measuring Socio-Technical Congruence (STC) is, however, presented as a suitable technique for helping to resolve those issues. This leads us to believe that applying STC measurements to GSE might be beneficial, improving communication and coordination. However, after studying existing tools that use STC measurements, we detected some gaps, both in the way they measure STC and in the features offered by the tools for the GSE environment. That is why we have designed an Agent Architecture for coordination and communication that aims to fill the gaps found in the current tools and includes features adapted to GSE characteristics. This is achieved by taking advantage of the special features that agents offer. Moreover, this proposal has been validated in a case study performed at Indra Software Labs, a global software development company. Results show that, by using our proposal, it is possible to improve coordination and communication in a distributed environment.
KW - Global Software Engineering
KW - Socio-Technical Congruence
KW - Software agents
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84894412821&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ins.2014.01.009
DO - 10.1016/j.ins.2014.01.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84894412821
SN - 0020-0255
VL - 264
SP - 230
EP - 259
JO - Information Sciences
JF - Information Sciences
ER -