The work-reflection-learning cycle - Department of Computer and ...

for managing team-internal task coordination and provide links to project documentation. Development
tools were used to write, test and integrate source code. Storage and versioning of project artifacts were
managed in a file versioning system that may or may not be integrated with the project management tool.
Email was used for formal and documented team-internal and external communication. Project teams
typically had their own mailing list. Internet sites were used to get necessary information about
technology. This included FAQ lists and discussion forums. IM was used for informal messages within
the team and to support synchronous, distributed work. Less frequently, it was used for communication
with other stakeholders.
In this paper, we will go into detail about the teams‟ use of instant messaging.
3 RESEARCH APPROACH
The paper is based on empirical research on SE student teams in the period 2006-2008 focusing on the
teams‟ use of collaboration technology (Krogstie and Bygstad 2007; Krogstie 2008; Krogstie 2008;
Krogstie 2009). The data have been collected from two project courses offered in the last (6th) semester
of undergraduate programs in IT at two different learning institutions (NITH and NTNU). In the courses,
teams of 3-5 members develop software for genuine customers. The main learning objective is to have
students get experience with SE work in a team for a customer. Project deliveries include a software
product and a report. The teams choose which collaboration and development tools to use, depending on
customer requirements, team members‟ prior experience, team members‟ wish to learn, and the
availability of the technology. The NITH and NTNU project courses are considered similar enough for
data on the teams‟ use of collaboration technology to be combined in our study.
The research on instant messaging is based on triangulation of data sources. They include 30-60 minutes‟
interviews about the use of collaboration technology in the teams, performed with all 7 teams in the NITH
course in 2006, all 9 teams in the NTNU course in 2007, and 10 out of the 11 teams in 2008. They also
include longitudinal observation of two NTNU teams (one in 2007 and one in 2008) over the entire
semester, and project deliveries and customer evaluation for all teams in the NITH course in 2006 and the
NTNU course in 2006-2008. Further, some NTNU teams in 2006-2008 have been interviewed after their
project based on interesting characteristics of their use of collaboration technology. In some cases, we
have asked teams for IM logs. Overall, the data from NITH have been used in combination with the
NTNU data to identify general patterns of collaboration technology use in the SE student teams. In-depth
study of IM use in single teams, with access to IM logs, has been conducted only with data from the
NTNU course.
The researchers‟ role as course staff at both learning institutions provided a background for identification
of interesting data and for their interpretation.
During data collection and analysis, some themes and concepts have been pursued from the start (e.g.
Instant Messaging), and some have emerged through the analysis. Summaries and transcripts have been
produced at need, and translation to English performed as necessary for publication.
The research for the paper can be considered mainly as an interpretive case study in which data collection
and analysis have been guided by a constructivist view of learning and guidelines for interpretive field
studies (Klein and Myers 1999). However, in the paper, rather than focusing in detail on “the complexity
of human sense making as the situation emerges” and understanding “phenomena through the meanings
that people assign to them” (Klein and Myers 1999), which typically implies an in-depth elaboration of
single cases, we wanted to present several examples to illustrate how instant messaging is used in
different ways in the projects and link the examples to general patterns of IM use seen from the
interviews. By drawing some inferences across the cases we thus approach a positivist type of case study
research (Yin 2003).
4 FINDINGS
Findings are presented in the following way: First, team-internal use of IM is addressed and next, we turn
to the use of IM in collaboration with project stakeholders. In our presentation we have given priority to
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