Information Needs in Collocated Software Development Teams

Previous research has documented the fragmented nature of software development work, with frequent interruptions and coordination. To explain this in more detail, we analyzed software developers' day-to-day information needs. We observed seventeen developers at a large software development company and transcribed their activities minute by minute in 90 minute sessions. We analyzed these logs for the information that developers sought, the sources that they used, and the situations that prevented information from being acquired. We identify twentyone information types and catalog the outcome and source when each type of information was sought. The most frequently sought information included awareness about artifacts and coworkers. The most often deferred searches included knowledge about design and program behavior, such as why code was written a particular way, what a program was supposed to do, and the cause of a program state. Developers often had to defer tasks because the onl...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ICSE
• Authors: Andrew J. Ko, Robert DeLine, Gina Venolia
• Keywords: ICSE 2007, Information Included Awareness, Searches Included Knowledge, Software Engineering, Unavailable Coworkers