Towards distributed software design meetings: what can we learn from co-located meetings?

ABSTRACT

While distributed code writing is becoming widespread, object-oriented software design still requires face-to-face interaction, curbing the potential and quality of global software development. Most designers reject general purpose conferencing tools for not meeting their needs, and feature-rich distributed CASE tools for being too formal. Our long-term goal is to develop effective tools for distributed software design that preserve natural working styles.A necessary first step is to identify the unique low-level characteristics of design meetings which must be mimicked in the virtual world. Our work embarks on this path with a detailed ethnographic study of two collocated design meetings. We present several observations and their implications for the design of collaboration tools.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: Object-oriented design methods

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
design meetings, software design, whiteboards