Candidate Talk: Why task-structure matters: The effects of task and social forces on coordination in software development

  • Christopher Poile | University of Waterloo, ON, Canada

It is surprising to realize how much of our behavior is a result of the social and organizational constraints placed on us. In this talk I will describe how an engineer’s task and social structure affects how they perform their task and how this behavior affects their coworkers. Of particular importance to large software companies are the effects of globally distributed development, collocation, ‘water cooler conversations,’ and other forms of social interaction. I will describe how these variables combine to create a field of forces which then influences an engineer’s behavior. I will present data from a field study of a Microsoft product group, and preliminary results from a controlled group experiment to support this argument. A better understanding of how structural and social forces interact will help us diagnose and improve the coordination between team members and groups. With this understanding we can hope to save money, produce better software, and improve the work situation of software engineers and knowledge workers.

Speaker Details

Christopher Poile is a Ph.D candidate at the in the Department of Management Sciences in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo, ON, Canada. His research interests include human aspects of software development, applying organizational behavior and organization theory to the study of software and new product development, and computer simulation as a method for investigating social systems. He received his B.A. Honours in Economics and his M.A.Sc in Management Sciences from University of Waterloo.

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