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An evolutionary perspective on socio-technical congruence: The rubber band effect

Fulltext:


Authors:

Stefanie Betz, Darja Smite, Samuel Fricker, Andrew Moss, Wasif Afzal, Mikael Svahnberg , Claes Wohlin , Jürgen Börstler, Tony Gorschek

Publication Type:

Conference/Workshop Paper

Venue:

Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Replication in Empirical Software Engineering Research (RESER'13), Collocated with 7th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM'13)

Abstract

Conway’s law assumes a strong association between the system’s architecture and the organization’s communication structure that designs it. In the light of contemporary software development, when many companies rely on geographically distributed teams, which often turn out to be temporarily composed and thus having an often changing communication structure, the importance of Conway’s law and its inspired work grows. In this paper, we examine empirical research related to Conway’s law and its application for cross-site coordination. Based on the results obtained we conjecture that changes in the communication structure alone sooner or later trigger changes in the design structure of the software products to return the sociotechnical system into the state of congruence. This is further used to formulate a concept of a rubber band effect and propose a replication study that goes beyond the original idea of Conway’s law by investigating the evolution of sociotechnical congruence over time.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{Betz3120,
author = {Stefanie Betz and Darja Smite and Samuel Fricker and Andrew Moss and Wasif Afzal and Mikael Svahnberg and Claes Wohlin and J{\"u}rgen B{\"o}rstler and Tony Gorschek},
title = {An evolutionary perspective on socio-technical congruence: The rubber band effect},
month = {October},
year = {2013},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Replication in Empirical Software Engineering Research (RESER'13), Collocated with 7th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM'13)},
url = {http://www.es.mdu.se/publications/3120-}
}