Building Collaboration into IDEs

Abstract

Software development is rarely a solo coding effort. More often, it is a collaborative process, with teams of developers working together to design solutions and produce quality code. The members of these close-knit teams often look at one another’s code, collectively make plans about how to proceed, and even fix each other’s bugs when necessary. Teamwork does not stop there, however. An extended team may include project managers, testers, architects, designers, writers, and other specialists, as well as other programming teams. Programmers also interact with the community of developers outside their organization to obtain advice, code snippets, and a general understanding of what works and what doesn’t.