COMMUNICATION AND ORGANIZATION IN SOFTWARE-DEVELOPMENT - AN EMPIRICAL-STUDY

The empirical study described in this paper addresses the issue of com munication among members of a software development organization. In pa rticular, we have studied interactions between participants in a revie w process. The question of interest is whether or not organizational r elationships among the review participants have an effect an the amoun t of communication effort expended The study uses both quantitative an d qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. These methods include participant observation, structured interviews, graphical data presentation, and nonparametric statistics The results of this study indicate that several organizational factors do affect communication e ffort, but not always in a simple, straightforward way. Not surprising ly, people take less time to communicate when they are familiar with o ne another and when they work in close physical proximity. However, ce rtain mixtures of organizationally ''close'' and ''distant'' participa nts in an interaction result in more effort needed 50 communicate. Als o, interactions fend to be more effort-intensive when they occur in a meeting and when more people are involved. These results provide a bet ter understanding of how organizational structure helps or hinders com munication in software development.