Soporte al inicio de colaboración en el desarrollo distribuido de software mediante esferas de trabajo colaborativas

Support for Starting Collaboration in Distributed Software Development through Collaborative Working Spheres

Ramón René Palacio Cinco¹, Alberto L. Morán y Solares² y Víctor Manuel González y González³

¹ Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora, Unidad Navojoa, México. ramon.palacio@itson.edu.mx

³ Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, México. victor.gonzalez@itam.mx

Article received on 15/03/2013.
Accepted on 14/10/2014.

Resumen

Este artículo estudia los entornos de trabajo donde grupos de personas interactúan de manera síncrona y remota (distribuida), con el propósito de crear y desarrollar software dentro del marco institucional de una organización, en lo que se conoce como desarrollo distribuido de software (DSD, por sus siglas en inglés). En este tipo de esquemas colaborativos, los desarrolladores requieren trabajar en grupos que están geográficamente distribuidos y su interacción generalmente es realizada con el apoyo de tecnología de información y comunicación. Es común que las tecnologías de colaboración no estén diseñadas para apoyar lo que llamamos inicio de colaboración informado, es decir los escenarios donde el iniciador de la colaboración pueda contar con la información de la actividad que realiza la persona buscada, con la cual, el iniciador pueda inferir si el momento para iniciarla es óptimo y apropiado para ambos. Para lograr esto, es necesario conocer el contexto de la actividad de la persona buscada en un momento determinado. Para apoyar el inicio de colaboración informado se propone la conceptualización y caracterización tecnológica de esferas de trabajo colaborativas, la cual aporta ideas de diseño para el desarrollo de una herramienta prototipo. A esta herramienta le llamamos CWS-IM (Collaborative Working Spheres - Instant Messaging). La herramienta es un mensajero instantáneo extendido con soporte para inicios de colaboración informados, la cual se introdujo a las actividades reales de DSD en una fábrica de software con la finalidad de evaluarla mediante un estudio de caso. Los resultados de esta evaluación proporcionan evidencia que muestra la aceptación favorable de CWS-IM por parte de los participantes en términos de utilidad, facilidad de uso, apoyo al inicio de interacción y gestión del nivel de interrupción.

Palabras Clave: Sistemas Colaborativos, Desarrollo Distribuido de Software, Manejo de Interrupciones, Ingeniería de Software.

This paper studies work environments where groups of people interact synchronously and remotely (distributed) with the purpose of creating and developing software within the institutional framework of an organization, in what is known as distributed software development (DSD). In this type of collaborative schemes, developers are required to work in groups that are geographically distributed and their interaction is usually conducted with the support of information and communication technologies. It is common that collaborative technologies are not designed to support what we call informed collaboration initiation, i.e., scenarios where the initiator of the collaboration can have the information of the activity that is being performed by the person he/she is looking for, with which the initiator can infer whether the time to start is optimal and appropriate for both of them. To achieve this it is necessary to know the context of the activity of the person that is being looked for at a given moment. To support the initiation of informed collaboration, the conceptualization and technological characterization of collaborative working spheres is proposed, which provides design ideas for the development of a prototype tool. We call this tool CWS-IM (Collaborative Working Spheres - Instant Messaging). The tool is an extended instant messenger with support for the initiation of informed collaboration, which was introduced to the actual activities of DSD in a software factory in order to evaluate it through a case study. The results of this evaluation show the favorable acceptance of CWS-IM by participants in terms of usefulness, ease of use, support for the initiation of informed interaction and disruption level management.

Keywords: Collaborative systems, distributed software development, interruption management, software engineering.

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