Our hits at ICSE ’12

In the past two semesters, I’ve been collaborating closely with other researchers to both learn from them and from what they’ve pointed at, as well as to contribute modestly to the body of knowledge, as is customary. Among our compositions, three hits were intended for three different workshops in this year’s ICSE in Zurich, Switzerland, and the three of them were accepted.

The first hit, “ProxiScientia: Toward Real-Time Visualization of Task and Developer Dependencies in Collaborating Software Development Teams,” which I coauthored with Kelly Blincoe, Adrian, Peppo Valetto, and Dana, is thus far the one whose lyrics I know the best, as you may have noticed here. We’ll be presenting this at CHASE, an arguably reputable workshop. Here’s a PDF of the paper. A funny constraint at CHASE, as in most other venues: limit the provision of your knowledge to 7 pages. One needs to inform ICSE about the existence of the concept of entropy in relation to data compression and the inherent computational difficulties to compress stuff. Note: Here in Canada we have a vast unused space and we don’t care of compressing; thus we do feel you, Switzerland :)…

The last two hits are mainly pedagogical reports on teaching software engineering in the face of modern constraints. The first such paper, and the second hit, is a concise synopsis I wrote with Dana, my supervisor, having TA-ed for her before as well. It’s titled “Teamwork, Coordination and Customer Relationship Management Skills: As Important as Technical Skills in Preparing Our SE Graduates” and will appear at EduRex. A preprint (PDF) can be found here. In my view, the learning outcomes we summarized as well as the challenges faced throughout the instructional process are the major contribution. To provide some context, we included a section alluding to the types of projects we had students develop, as an anonymous reviewer pointed at.

The third and final hit is a paper I coauthored with Dana, Casper Lassenius, Maria Paasivaara, and Adrian, titled “Teaching a Globally Distributed Project Course Using Scrum Practices” (PDF here). The intent here was to report on observations regarding the applicability of agile methods (e.g. SCRUM) in GSD settings. The ecology used for observation was the GSD environment set up for the GSD course taught at the University of Victoria, Canada in collaboration with Aalto University, Finland. (I’ve dedicated a post to that course since it was my second PhD course and an interesting experience at the same time.) This is an important report on the challenges students faced in employing scrum practices in GSD teams. In particular, student teams (three, in total) comprised Canadian and Finnish teammates separated culturally, temporally, and geographically, noting that the linguistic distance wasn’t really a factor. It will be great to argue on the challenges faced (and lessons learnt, now that the course is over) with other workshop participants who had to resort to similar instructional strategies/designs and who experienced all sorts of challenges for all sorts of reasons.

More updates to come in future posts as we prepare for ICSE ’12.

Prophesying on the edge: The future of collaborative software development

The CSCW ’12 conference, held in Seattle, WA, 74 miles apart from Victoria, BC, was a blast. Or, so I heard. I didn’t attend. I couldn’t attend. I belong to a different cultural species, at a level where preponderant cultures impose visa restrictions. Nevertheless, I had a paper accepted at the Future of Collaborative Software Development (FoCSD) workshop, whereby experts were invited to talk about the future. My paper, titled “Embracing Distributed Work: Why Distance Shall Matter (Even) Less,” (PDF here) coauthored with Adrian Schröter and Daniela Damian, talked about the importance of distributed software development in terms of its inherent benefits vs. the benefits of collocated development. In brief, FoCSD poster for the benefits and my prophecy for the future: The benefits of distributed work comprise a whole larger than the sum of its parts; thus, it should be embraced without any local hesitation. Here’s Adrian’s post on this and another FoCSD paper where I appear as a coauthor.

But the speculation per se is not the real issue when it comes to academic venues. What really concerns me here is the actuation of such workshops, whereby experts talk about the future using scientific principles, such as dialectics, statistical inference, etc. The entire process of predicting the future is not only erroneous in its intent, but also reduces to intellectual poverty.

The field of CSCW entails social and cultural research because, after all, studied actors include human beings and their ecologies. One major argument for talking about future trends in social sciences is exactly the presupposed abundance of historical data. That is, social scientists intending to predict the future assume a historicistic approach with respect to a social and cultural process, such as distributed software development. Yet, as Karl Popper has argued in his book “The Poverty of Historicism,” such attempts are doomed to philosophical, intellectual, and actual failure, most certainly. This is what I meant by intellectual poverty above.

Furthermore, in less philosophical, but more realistic, terms, Michael Shermer has nicely articulated in a Huffington Post article, why we, the expert prophets, are merely wrong. According to Shermer, no matter how many existing studies one quotes to talk about the future, one has confirmation bias, “which our brains employ to reinforce what we already believe while ignoring disconfirming data.” If the rebuttal here is that such academic venues as CSCW are highly specialized and focused on such research, then this indeed “increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance.”

While I refrain from considering my CSCW FoCSD paper as a prediction to future trends in distributed software development, I believe the Popperian criticism of historicism and Shermer’s nice recollection about the futility of predictions do apply in my case. It is this wit which may have probably affected some FoCSD organizer, who decided to not make the FoCSD proceedings available to the public.

Wise move to save oneself :).

[Workshop] Time-Space Distanciation Between Governments and Citizens: Computer-Supported Collaboration in e-Participation

On November 1, three students and myself organization a workshop on e-Government in the context of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. This was a student-led workshop per one of the requirements of the CSCW course taught by Margaret-Anne Storey at UVic. Below is a post one of my collaborators assembled, reflecting the overall discussions that took place during the three-hour workshop. The website with more info is located here.

Guest lecture: Value-Added Decision-Making Through Engaged Consultation
John Bird

We were lucky enough to have  John Bird in to open our workshop on eParticipation.  As a man heavily involved in the educational system and his community as a whole, he shared his experiences where an eParticipation tool could have facilitated cooperation, collaboration and deliberation between opposing groups. His thought-provoking stories provided some practical applications of eParticipation systems and examples of real-life issues that could arise in participation and deliberation.   He emphasized the fact that disengagement is nothing new – it has been an ongoing issue in society.  We are not only faced with youth disengagement, but our population as a whole.   What IS new is the means of communication and the platform on which civic engagement and participation shows promise.

Building a Platform for ‘Cyber Citizens’: Design and Evaluation Frameworks for e-Participation

Elyse Regan

We discussed the motivation behind eParticipation and the need for coherent frameworks for design and evaluation in order to better understand current implementations and improve upon them.  A general framework was presented and some strategies on realizing the benefits of eGovernment and eParticipation were discussed.  Specifically, we examined the possibility/reality of needing a neutral 3rd party to stand between government and citizens, to ensure the interests and rights of all stakeholders are fairly upheld.  A discussion with the group revealed some important questions to consider: How to we define ‘neutral’? What does this 3rd party look like (government funded or publicly run)? How do we deal with security issues?  A number of influential factors that were brought to light became topics of discussion and debate throughout the workshop.

Challenges and Approaches of E-Participation in a CSCW Environment

Omar Alaqeeli

In this segment of our workshop, we discussed the challenges and approaches in e-participation and we exercised a short activity. The audience has broke up into four groups and each group had presented their brainstorming and received questions. Challenges regarding technical, demographics, democracy issues have been discussed along with approaches to resolve them.

12 Million Angry Men (and Women): Social Decision Support Systems for e-Participation

Jenn Bird

This talk focused on a potential model for a Social Decision Support System that may be used to facilitate integration of these diverse views into a general social knowledge base.

Panel Discussion: “Research Directions: E-Participation Approaches and Collaborative Tools — Their Viability and Influence in Public Policy-Making”

Evert Lindquist, David Miller, Adrian Schröter, Arber Borici

The panelists were invited to discuss on research directions and challenges of all the aforementioned e-participation-related issues. Evert, as an expert in public policy and deliberative democracy, spoke on public engagement. He posited the question of how to work with user communities so that technology professionals can come up with appropriate, user-centric technological solutions. He claimed that public engagement used to be at higher rates in the 1980s (at least in Canada), whereby technology was nowhere near as advanced as it is today. Another resonating point Evert made was his advice for us, software engineers, to be historical, i.e. to look at the flow of facts and events of the past pertaining to public participation and to thereby discern where we can possibly make a difference. David was more pragmatic; he claimed that is essential for us to look at existing patterns of public engagement and to augment them appropriately. For it would otherwise be constituted as a “cynical take at the problem”, in the sense that others’ views and accepted standards are (unintentionally) disregarded. Adrian pressed upon the fact that the government is the entity responsible for making information available to the public. Arber focused on the discursive approach to e-participation, in the sense of deliberative democracy. He made reference to Fung’s Democracy Cube to conclude that actors can participate at different levels of influence. In turn, Evert alluded to the fact that deliberative democracy approaches have historically been limited to local deliberations, rather than global ones.

Resources

You can find additional information, such as the goals and objectives of our workshop, on our website.

Designing Mediating Spaces Between Citizens and Government

Government 2.0 – Hype, Hope, or Reality?

Understanding e-Participation

Transforming Government People Process Policy

e-Participation, a discursive approach

Framework for eParticipation & Good Practice

Fung’s Democracy Cube