Software development as a knowledge intensive activity involves high requirements for communication and collaboration between its practitioners. In global software development, geographical, cultural and language distances bring additional challenges to communication. While text-based communication is very common in global software projects, recent improvements in telecommunications technology and network infrastructure have enabled ad-hoc audio conferencing as an economically feasible and available communication medium. Media richness theory suggests audio conferencing as a richer medium to have potential in leveraging uncertainty and equivocality, while media synchronicity theory suggests using multiple communication media to accomplish a task. This empirical qualitative study is based on 57 interviews from eight global software development projects. We discovered that self-conception of poor language skills leads to preference to use text-based communication media. We also found out that technical personnel tends to prefer text-based communication media more than non-technical team members.
%0 Conference Paper
%1 5196929
%A Niinimaki, T.
%A Piri, A.
%A Lassenius, C.
%B Global Software Engineering, 2009. ICGSE 2009. Fourth IEEE International Conference on
%D 2009
%K communication media reticollab0910
%P 153-162
%R 10.1109/ICGSE.2009.23
%T Factors Affecting Audio and Text-Based Communication Media Choice in Global Software Development Projects
%U http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?isnumber=5196905&arnumber=5196929&count=60&index=19
%X Software development as a knowledge intensive activity involves high requirements for communication and collaboration between its practitioners. In global software development, geographical, cultural and language distances bring additional challenges to communication. While text-based communication is very common in global software projects, recent improvements in telecommunications technology and network infrastructure have enabled ad-hoc audio conferencing as an economically feasible and available communication medium. Media richness theory suggests audio conferencing as a richer medium to have potential in leveraging uncertainty and equivocality, while media synchronicity theory suggests using multiple communication media to accomplish a task. This empirical qualitative study is based on 57 interviews from eight global software development projects. We discovered that self-conception of poor language skills leads to preference to use text-based communication media. We also found out that technical personnel tends to prefer text-based communication media more than non-technical team members.
@inproceedings{5196929,
abstract = {Software development as a knowledge intensive activity involves high requirements for communication and collaboration between its practitioners. In global software development, geographical, cultural and language distances bring additional challenges to communication. While text-based communication is very common in global software projects, recent improvements in telecommunications technology and network infrastructure have enabled ad-hoc audio conferencing as an economically feasible and available communication medium. Media richness theory suggests audio conferencing as a richer medium to have potential in leveraging uncertainty and equivocality, while media synchronicity theory suggests using multiple communication media to accomplish a task. This empirical qualitative study is based on 57 interviews from eight global software development projects. We discovered that self-conception of poor language skills leads to preference to use text-based communication media. We also found out that technical personnel tends to prefer text-based communication media more than non-technical team members.},
added-at = {2009-10-11T01:11:01.000+0200},
author = {Niinimaki, T. and Piri, A. and Lassenius, C.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2a740bd919adcd37a63c87e9672fa5668/lanubile},
booktitle = {Global Software Engineering, 2009. ICGSE 2009. Fourth IEEE International Conference on},
doi = {10.1109/ICGSE.2009.23},
interhash = {d0e6370bd62bdc57142a85f0a7d86937},
intrahash = {a740bd919adcd37a63c87e9672fa5668},
keywords = {communication media reticollab0910},
month = {July},
pages = {153-162},
timestamp = {2011-05-09T19:45:46.000+0200},
title = {Factors Affecting Audio and Text-Based Communication Media Choice in Global Software Development Projects},
url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?isnumber=5196905&arnumber=5196929&count=60&index=19},
year = 2009
}