The subject of this dissertation is an empirical study whose goal is to characterize certain aspects of communication among members of a software development organization. The independent variables in this study are various attributes of organizational structure. The dependent variable is the effort spent on sharing information which is required by the code inspection process in use. The research questions upon which the study is based ask whether or not these attributes of organizational structure have an effect on the amount of communication effort expended. In addition, several other variables have been included, such as code size and complexity, which represent factors other than organizational structure which may have an effect on communication effort. The study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. These methods include participant observation, structured interviews, graphical data presentation, and interpretation of statistical results with qualitative anecdotes. In addition, a pilot study was conducted to test this combination of methods. The findings, which are presented as a set of hypotheses, show that all of the organizational structure characteristics studied do have an effect on communication effort, at least in some circumstances. The work described in this dissertation helps to enable a whole new area of research, by illustrating one effective way of conducting such investigations, and by providing some hypotheses with which to begin.
展开▼
