Engineering Software Engineering Teams

Patrick WagstromIBM TJ Watson Research Center

Presented at SSE’11 – September 5, 2011

2

What Does an Organization Do?

Info

Can I act on this?

Alice

Bob

Carl

Bob, can you help me here?

Here’s the nugget of info

you need.

Maybe Carl can help.

More Info

MAGIC!

September 5, 2011

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Hey! You Got Economics in my Software Engineering!

Keynesian Austrian

September 5, 2011

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I am not an EconomistKeynesian Austrian

(nor do I play one on TV)

Knowledge flows down Knowledge flows up

September 5, 2011

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What about Software Engineering?

September 5, 2011

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Solutions?

• Developer tools!– Bugzilla– SCM– Mailing lists

• Integrated Tools– Rational Team Concert– GitHub

September 5, 2011

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What about Software Engineering?

September 5, 2011

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What We Did

• Interviewed numerous developers, architects, managers, executives, etc

• Part of a larger project to build tools to support the complete software delivery process

September 5, 2011

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General Findings

• Projects had tried to work bottom up or top down, but failed

• Often time there was one important cog• This person was well known– Not necessarily established rank– Significant pull with external stakeholders– Knowledge of the process

• We call this person an intercessor

September 5, 2011

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Where it Gets Messy…

• Sometimes managers were not aware of what intercessor did

• Sometimes developers were not aware of what intercessor did

• Intercessor may leave the organization and no one may know

• Is there a way to empirically discover the intercessor?

September 5, 2011