Towards a model of awareness support of software development in GSD

Abstract

Awareness is a powerful concept that can be used to enable developers to quickly and easily grasp the state of the workspace which they operate within. We begin by explaining one approach to how awareness might be used to support software development and to enhance developer cooperation and communication. However, since this approach assumes on-going collaboration it is useful to couch the discussion within a collaborative model. This paper presents a model of how awareness could support software collaboration, by describing typical software collaboration, how it is deficient and how awareness helps ameliorates those deficiencies. Finally, we discuss a variety of issues that become apparent when considering the approach. It is intended that these issues will stir debate and may help generate insight that ultimately improves global software development via awareness support.