Constructing common information spaces in global software development

This paper examines some of the issues involved in the coordination of geographically distributed software development teams. In recent years, the phenomenon of global software development (GSD) has become widespread, for a variety of reasons such as “chasing the sun”, purportedly lower costs in certain countries, labour availability, market accessibility, etc. It is often assumed that the problems of time and distance separating team members can be handled through modern computing and telecommunications hardware and software. However, many voices are now being raised pointing to on-going difficulties in maintaining shared awareness of project status, lack of contextual information, and difficulties in understanding across different cultures. We have recently begun a project investigating the social, organizational and cultural aspects of global software development, focusing on the work practices of the team members, in order to document and analyse concrete instances of communication and coordination difficulties. Our perspective on this area is informed by earlier work in the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research field, especially concerning the work that people must do to make sense of each other, whether in face-to-face, or computer-mediated interaction. In this paper we discuss one concept, that of Common Information Spaces (CISs), and show how we believe that this concept might be useful in helping to analyse some of the ways in which distributed teams achieve some level of mutual understanding. We briefly illustrate our account with reference to some early fieldwork material we have gathered.