Victor G. J. Costa
ABSTRACT
Background: Organizations are constantly looking for performance improvements, and office layout has been widely studied because of its hypothetical influences on the social dynamics of software engineering projects. Aim: In this article, we investigate the perceived outcomes of different workspace characteristics, from the perspective of software engineering professionals. Methods: To achieve that, we conducted a survey with software engineering practitioners, and collected data on the perceptions about their current workspaces and performance from 47 participants. We used the results of a previous systematic review to design the survey questionnaire, and focused on the four human aspects known to be influenced by the office layout. Results: Different workspace settings exhibited similar perceptions in most of the investigated factors. However, we reveal 14 items that responsible for significant differences in the performance outcomes, such as communication quality, collaboration, team learning, privacy and others. In general, open spaces were the most effective office layout to enable all these factors. Conclusions: As a conclusion, our study demonstrates that there is not a generally accepted best model for software development workspace design, as all types of setting have positive and negative aspects. Organizations that are considering investing any budget in such things as radical workspace redesign should ponder the change very carefully. Also, there is still much room for investigation in this topic.
- M. C. Davis, D. J. Leach and, C. W. Clegg (2011). The Physical Environment of the Office: Contemporary and Emerging Issues. International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 26, 193--235.Google Scholar
- Paweλ Rola, Dorota Kuchta, and Dominika Kopczyk (2016). Conceptual model of working space for Agile (Scrum) project team. Journal of Systems and Software, Vol 118, 49--63.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Deepti Mishra, Alok Mishra, and Sofiya Ostrovska (2012). Impact of physical ambiance on communication, collaboration and coordination in agile software development: An empirical evaluation. Information and Software Technology, 54(10), 1067--1078.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Y. Hua, V. Loftness, R. Kraut, and K. M. Powell (2010). Workplace Collaborative Space Layout Typology and Occupant Perception of Collaboration Environment. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 37(3), 429--448.Google ScholarCross Ref
- C. B. Danielsson and L. Bodin (2008). Office Type in Relation to Job Satisfaction Among Employees. (2008), 636--668.Google Scholar
- M. Q. Tran and Robert Biddle (2009). An Ethnographic Study of Collaboration in a Game Development Team.Google Scholar
- Muhammad Ovais Ahmad, Valentina Lenarduzzi, Markku Oivo, and Davide Taibi (2018). Lessons Learned on Communication Channels and Practices. Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS '18), Poznan, 929--938.Google Scholar
- Helen Sharp and Hugh Robinson (2008). Collaboration and coordination in mature eXtreme programming teams. International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 66(7), 506--518.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Helen Sharp, Rosalba Giuffrida, and Grigori Melnik (2012). Information Flow within a Dispersed Agile Team: A Distributed Cognition Perspective. In Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. XP (2012). Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, Vol 111. Springer, Berlin.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Viviane Santos, Alfredo Goldman, Eduardo Guerra, Cleidson De Souza, and Helen Sharp (2013). A pattern language for interteam knowledge sharing in agile software development. Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP '13), Art. 20, The Hillside Group, USA.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Trevor Keeling, Derek Clements-Croome, and Etienne Roesch (2015). The Effect of Agile Workspace and Remote Working on Experiences of Privacy, Crowding and Satisfaction. Buildings, 5(3), 880--898.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Zhu, L. (2013). Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services The physical office environment in technical services in ARL libraries. Library Collections, Acquisitions and Technical Services, 37(1-2), 42--55.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Markus Hummel, Christoph Rosenkranz, and Roland Holten (2015). The Role of Social Agile Practices for Direct and Indirect Communication in Information Systems Development Teams Information Systems Development Teams. Vol. 36, Art.15.Google Scholar
- Stephanie D. Teasley, Lisa A. Covi, M. S. Krishnan, and Judith S. Olson (2002). Rapid Software Development Through Team Collocation. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. 28(7), 671--683.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Paul M. Clarke and Rory V. O'Connor (2012). The situational factors that affect the software development process: Towards a comprehensive reference framework. Information and Software Technology, 54(5), 433--447.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Görkem Giray, Murat Yilmaz, Rory V. O'Connor, and Paul M. Clarke (2018). The Impact of Situational Context on Software Process: A Case Study of a Very Small-Sized Company in the Online Advertising Domain. Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement. Proceedings of the 25th European Conference, (EuroSPI 2018), Bilbao, Spain, Vol. 896, 28--39, Bilbao, Spain.Google ScholarCross Ref
- J. M. Verner, M A Babar, N Cerpa, T Hall, and S Beecham (2014). The Journal of Systems and Software Factors that motivate software engineering teams: A four country empirical study. The Journal of Systems & Software 92, (2014), 115--127.Google Scholar
- César França, Fabio Q. B. da Silva, and Helen Sharp 2018. Motivation and Satisfaction of Software Engineers. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (2018).Google Scholar
- Victor G. J. Costa and César França (2019). How Workspaces Influence Software Development? Preliminary Results of a Systematic Literature Review in Workshop on Software Visualization (VEM), 2019, Salvador. Anais do VII Workshop on Software Visualization, Evolution and Maintenance (VEM). Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação, sep. 2019. p. 53--60.Google Scholar
- B. A. Kitchenham, T. Dyba, and M. Jorgensen. (2004). Evidence-based software engineering. Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Software Engineering, (ICSE '04), IEEE Computer Society, Washington DC, USA, 273--281.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Barbara Kitchenham, Rialette Pretorius, David Budgen, O. Pearl Brereton, Mark Turner, Mahmood Niazi, and Stephen Linkman (2010). Systematic Literature Reviews in Software Engineering - A Tertiary Study. Information and Software Technology. 52(8), 792--805.Google ScholarDigital Library
- A Rubin (2009). Statistics for Evidence-Based Practice and Evaluation. Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
- Eva Ostertagova, Oskar Ostertag, and Jozef Kováč (2014). Methodology and Application of the Kruskal-Wallis Test. Applied Mechanics and Materials, Vol. 611, 115--120.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kris E. Berg and Richard Wayne Latin (2008). Essentials of research methods in health, physical education, exercise science, and recreation. Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, USAGoogle Scholar
- Mark Gardener (2012). Beginning R: the statistical programming language. John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
- Jeffrey A. Livermore (2008). Factors that significantly impact the implementation of an agile software development methodology. Journal of Software, 3(4), 31--36.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Minna Hallikainen (2011). Experiences on Agile seating, facilities and solutions: Multisite environment. Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, (ICGSE '11), 119--123.Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- How Office Layouts Influence Software Development?
Recommendations
Software development: what it is, what it should be, and how to get there
Developing large software systems is notoriously difficult and unpredictable. Software projects are often canceled, finish late and over budget, or yield low quality results --- setting software engineering apart from established engineering ...
Development of a Software Engineering Ontology for Multisite Software Development
This paper aims to present an ontology model of software engineering to represent its knowledge. The fundamental knowledge relating to software engineering is well described in the textbook entitled Software Engineering by Sommerville that is now in its ...
Motivation in Software Engineering: A systematic literature review
Objective: In this paper, we present a systematic literature review of motivation in Software Engineering. The objective of this review is to plot the landscape of current reported knowledge in terms of what motivates developers, what de-motivates them ...
Comments