A field of study addressing the way collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of software and computer systems commonly referred to as groupware, as well as their psychological, social, and organizational effects.
Published in Chapter:
Characterization and Classification of Collaborative Tools
Javier Soriano (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain), Rafael Fernández (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain), and Miguel Jiménez (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-885-7.ch022
Abstract
Traditionally, collaboration has been a means for organizations to do their work. However, the context in which they do this work is changing, especially in regards to where the work is done, how the work is organized, who does the work, and with this the characteristics of collaboration. Software development is no exception; it is itself a collaborative effort that is likewise affected by these changes. In the context of both open source software development projects and communities and organizations that develop corporate products, more and more developers need to communicate and liaise with colleagues in geographically distant places about the software product they are conceiving, designing, building, testing, debugging, deploying and maintaining. Thus, work teams face sizeable collaborative challenges, for which they have need of tools that they can use to communicate and coordinate their work efficiently.