Understanding Roles in Software Organizations

Опубликовано 17 августа 2016, 3:37

Software professionals typically divide their work by roles---developers, testers, and so on---, but researchers have yet to examine the nature of these basic elements of organization in detail. In this talk, I will first present a theoretical framework formulated to address this gap. The framework is adapted from sociological and organizational research, and it defines roles as social constructs formed by sets of expectations. Since expectations shift, the roles that they constitute evolve and separate from organizational policy and formal positions. I will also report on the results from an empirical case study of two software groups, informed by the framework. In this study, my colleagues and I found that role definitions are inconsistent within and between organizations that they are shaped by institutional, historical, structural, and personal factors, and that people enacting different roles vary in their selection and use of communication media. These results should help us understand and improve collaboration and organizational design in software groups. I will conclude my talk with a summary of these potential applications.