Software Engineering as Cooperative Work

Excerpt

Software engineering research (SE) and research on computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) seem to have had a difficult-even non-existent-relationship at various times. The reasons might vary, but are likely to include the fact that, while depending on each other to achieve the common goal of developing useful software, the methods and the theoretic underpinnings they depend upon differ considerably. CSCW, as is well-known, is firmly based on a worldview that stresses the role of human actors in the production of technical artefacts, and in particular how best to understand the cooperative engagements that inevitably underpin human activity. This has meant, in turn, that analysis has largely come from the province of the human sciences. Unsurprisingly, this has methodological consequences. Although by no means ubiquitous, so-called ‘qualitative’ methods have become accepted to such a degree that they are entirely unremarkable in the CSCW community. Ethnographers now apply their trade in a large variety of contexts, and groups involved in the production of software artefacts have become one of the contexts in which they are increasingly commonly found. …