How a geographically distributed software team managed to negotiate successfully using chat technology

Nelson Tenório, Pernille Bjørn
2019 Revista Tecnologia e Sociedade  
Negotiation is best accomplished in collocated settings, and negotiation in geographically distributed settings is prone to failure with a risk of conflicts. Investigating distributed software development, we were surprised to discover that a software development team, located in different parts of Brazil, was able to negotiate successfully and reach an agreement to change from ticket-oriented processes towards release-oriented processes for bug fixing activities using only chat technology. In
more » ... his paper, we explore how the chat technology allowed the distributed software team (including both vendor and client team members) to successfully negotiate and reach agreement about adopting and implementing a new collaborative workflow in the governmental IT-project. Our research method is based upon an ethnographically informed empirical study of the software development involved in a Brazilian software company. Thus, the data collected shows that the chat technology provided a platform for the team to engage informally in important discussions across locations. The chat technology allowed participants to navigate both within and across diverse subgroups (collocated client-developers; distributed clientdeveloper, and distributed developers-developers), which supported successful subgroup dynamics avoiding the risk of conflicts emerging from faultlines.
doi:10.3895/rts.v15n37.8655 fatcat:u5kesk54szahdmio6eeb4j4phy