Abstract
In this paper we discuss the importance of communication in software development. Communication has long been recognized as an important element of a successful software project. The quality of communication within the development team and between the development team and external entities impacts on the performance of the software project. However there is little evidence to suggest that approaches to software development have adequately emphasized high quality communications. Our findings suggest that the SEI's family of Capability Maturity Models, arguably the most influential models of software development, address communication in a very superficial way. We consider the impact of poor communication on the performance of a team of developers working in a software organization that has been assessed at CMM Level 5. We conducted multi-level interviews with all developers in the software team. Our main findings are that, although the team recognizes the importance of communication, many communication problems are reported. Furthermore, we found that human-centric processes, such as communication, were much less mature than the technical processes. We discuss the typical personality traits that may mitigate against developers being good communicators. We conclude that one way to overcome this is for development models to address communication more explicitly.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | SIGMIS-CPR 2007 - Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMIS CPR Conference |
Subtitle of host publication | The Global Information Technology Workforce |
Pages | 196-202 |
Number of pages | 7 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 01 Dec 2007 |
Event | 45th Annual Computer Personnel Research Conference, ACM SIGMIS CPR 2007 - Saint Louis, MO, United States Duration: 19 Apr 2007 → 21 Apr 2007 |
Conference
Conference | 45th Annual Computer Personnel Research Conference, ACM SIGMIS CPR 2007 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Saint Louis, MO |
Period | 19/04/2007 → 21/04/2007 |
Keywords
- CMM
- Communication
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Information Systems
- Software
- Information Systems and Management