Communication in Distributed Software Development: An exploratory study of Hybrid and Remote Teams
Resumo
In Distributed Software Development (DSD) projects, communication is essential for collaboration among geographically dispersed members. Tools such as Slack support communication flows and activity coordination, helping teams overcome challenges imposed by distance. The growing adoption of distributed models has generated new team arrangements and reconfigured communication dynamics, highlighting the need for empirical studies on these contexts. This study aimed to understand communication dynamics in different DSD team arrangements, hybrid and remote. An exploratory multiple case study was conducted over 13 months, analyzing Slack data from two projects within the same institutional context in Brazil, complemented by participant observation and document analysis. The results show that both teams predominantly use private channels, suggesting this is a structural characteristic of communication via Slack, and that communication is shaped mainly by the structures established in collaboration tools, being more influenced by factors such as team size, role diversity, project domain, and management practices than by the team arrangement itself.
Palavras-chave:
Distributed Software Development, Communication, Team Arrangements, Text Minining, Slack
Referências
Audy, J. and Prikladnicki, R. (2007). Desenvolvimento Distribuído De Software (in Portuguese). Elsevier.
Berntzen, M., Hoda, R., Moe, N., and Stray, V. (2022). A taxonomy of inter-team coordination mechanisms in large-scale agile. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 48(12):4699–4715.
Blei, D. M., Ng, A. Y., and Jordan, M. I. (2003). Latent Dirichlet allocation. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3:993–1022.
Bogolii, O. (2023). Agile software development in a remotely working geographically distributed team: A systematic review. European Project Management Journal, 13:23–36.
Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method, volume 9.
Brooks, F. P. (1995). The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley, anniversary edition.
Bryman, A. (2016). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press, 5th edition.
Ford, D., Storey, M.-A., Zimmermann, T., Bird, C., Jaffe, S., Maddila, C., Butler, J. L., Houck, B., and Nagappan, N. (2022). A tale of two cities: Software developers working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. In ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, volume 31, pages 1–37.
Garro-Abarca, V., Palos-Sanchez, P., and Mariano, A. (2021). Virtual teams in times of pandemic: Factors that influence performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 12:624637.
Herbsleb, J. and Mockus, A. (2003). An empirical study of speed and communication in globally distributed software development. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 29(6):481–494.
Herbsleb, J. D. and Moitra, D. (2001). Global software development. IEEE Software, 18(2):16–20.
Jackson, V., van der Hoek, A., and Prikladnicki, R. (2022). Collaboration tool choices and use in remote software teams: emerging results from an ongoing study. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, pages 76–80, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ACM.
Kumar, S. and Wallace, C. (2013). A tale of two projects: A pattern based comparison of communication strategies in student software development. In 2013 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), pages 1844–1850, Oklahoma City, OK, USA. IEEE.
Leitão Júnior, N. G. a. d. S. (2021). A Theory of Communication in Distributed Software Development Teams. PhD thesis, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife.
Licorish, S. A. and MacDonell, S. G. (2015). Communication and personality profiles of global software developers. Information and Software Technology, 64:113–131.
Lin, C., Standing, C., and Liu, Y.-C. (2008). A model to develop effective virtual teams. Decision Support Systems, 45:1031–1045.
Lowry, P., Roberts, T., Romano, N., Cheney, P., and Hightower, R. (2006). The impact of group size and social presence on small-group communication. Small Group Research, 37:631–661.
Mezouar, M. E., Costa, D. A. D., German, D. M., and Zou, Y. (2022). Exploring the use of chatrooms by developers: An empirical study on slack and gitter. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 48(10):3988–4001.
Neumayr, T., Saatci, B., Rintel, S., Klokmose, C. N., and Augstein, M. (2021). What was hybrid? a systematic review of hybrid collaboration and meetings research. arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.06172.
Noroozi, M. (2018). To slack or not to slack; challenges of communication and coordination in distributed software development. Master’s thesis, University of Oslo.
Olson, G. M. and Olson, J. S. (2000). Distance matters. Human-Computer Interaction, 15(2–3):139–178.
Quadros, E. L. L. D., Lisboa, A. S., Souza, M. Q. B., Prikladnicki, R., and Chaves, M. S. (2022). The migration from forced remote work to hybrid work and its impacts on software quality: the case of a multinational company. In Proceedings of the XXI Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality, pages 1–10, Curitiba, Brazil. ACM.
Ralph, P., Baltes, S., Adisaputri, G., Torkar, R., Kovalenko, V., Kalinowski, M., Novielli, N., Yoo, S., Devroey, X., Tan, X., Zhou, M., Turhan, B., Hoda, R., Hata, H., Robles, G., Fard, A. M., and Alkadhi, R. (2020). Pandemic programming: How COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help. Empirical Software Engineering, 25:4927–4961.
Runeson, P. and Höst, M. (2009). Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empirical Software Engineering, 14(2):131–164.
Santos, R. E. D. and Ralph, P. (2022). A grounded theory of coordination in remote-first and hybrid software teams. In Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 25–35.
Shi, L., Chen, X., Yang, Y., Jiang, H., Jiang, Z., Niu, N., and Wang, Q. (2021). A first look at developers’ live chat on Gitter. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, pages 391–403, Athens, Greece. ACM.
Silge, J. and Robinson, D. (2017). Text Mining with R. O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, CA.
Silva, C. C., Galster, M., and Gilson, F. (2022). A qualitative analysis of themes in instant messaging communication of software developers. Journal of Systems and Software, 192:111397.
Stray, V. and Barbala, A. (2024). Slack use in large-scale agile organizations: ESN tools as catalysts for alignment? In Šmite, D., Guerra, E., Wang, X., Marchesi, M., and Gregory, P., editors, Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, volume 512, pages 20–35. Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham.
Stray, V. and Moe, N. B. (2020). Understanding coordination in global software engineering: A mixed-methods study on the use of meetings and Slack. Journal of Systems and Software, 170:110717.
Stray, V., Moe, N. B., and Noroozi, M. (2019). Slack me if you can! using enterprise social networking tools in virtual agile teams. In 2019 ACM/IEEE 14th International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), pages 111–121, Montreal, QC, Canada. IEEE.
Thanthony, S., Marnewick, A., and Marnewick, C. (2022). Communication patterns and team performance within agile software development project. International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 15(1):118–146.
Vilaça, D. P. (2023). Uma análise exploratória de colaboração baseado em conversas exportadas do Slack (in Portuguese). PhD thesis.
Šmite, D., Christensen, E. L., Tell, P., and Russo, D. (2023a). The future workplace: Characterizing the spectrum of hybrid work arrangements for software teams. IEEE Software, 40(2):34–41.
Šmite, D. and Moe, N. (2023). Defining a remote work policy: Aligning actions and intentions. In Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops, pages 149–158.
Šmite, D., Moe, N. B., Klotins, E., and Gonzalez-Huerta, J. (2023b). From forced working-from-home to voluntary remote work after COVID-19: A study of the shift in developer intentions and preferences. Journal of Systems and Software, 195:111509.
Šmite, D., Moe, N. B., and Ågerfalk, P. J. (2010). Agility Across Time and Space: Implementing Agile Methods in Global Software Projects. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Webster, J. and Wong, W. K. P. (2008). Comparing traditional and virtual group forms: identity, communication and trust in naturally occurring project teams. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(1):41–62.
Yin, R. K. (2018). Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 6th edition.
Berntzen, M., Hoda, R., Moe, N., and Stray, V. (2022). A taxonomy of inter-team coordination mechanisms in large-scale agile. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 48(12):4699–4715.
Blei, D. M., Ng, A. Y., and Jordan, M. I. (2003). Latent Dirichlet allocation. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3:993–1022.
Bogolii, O. (2023). Agile software development in a remotely working geographically distributed team: A systematic review. European Project Management Journal, 13:23–36.
Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method, volume 9.
Brooks, F. P. (1995). The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Addison-Wesley, anniversary edition.
Bryman, A. (2016). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press, 5th edition.
Ford, D., Storey, M.-A., Zimmermann, T., Bird, C., Jaffe, S., Maddila, C., Butler, J. L., Houck, B., and Nagappan, N. (2022). A tale of two cities: Software developers working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. In ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, volume 31, pages 1–37.
Garro-Abarca, V., Palos-Sanchez, P., and Mariano, A. (2021). Virtual teams in times of pandemic: Factors that influence performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 12:624637.
Herbsleb, J. and Mockus, A. (2003). An empirical study of speed and communication in globally distributed software development. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 29(6):481–494.
Herbsleb, J. D. and Moitra, D. (2001). Global software development. IEEE Software, 18(2):16–20.
Jackson, V., van der Hoek, A., and Prikladnicki, R. (2022). Collaboration tool choices and use in remote software teams: emerging results from an ongoing study. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, pages 76–80, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ACM.
Kumar, S. and Wallace, C. (2013). A tale of two projects: A pattern based comparison of communication strategies in student software development. In 2013 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), pages 1844–1850, Oklahoma City, OK, USA. IEEE.
Leitão Júnior, N. G. a. d. S. (2021). A Theory of Communication in Distributed Software Development Teams. PhD thesis, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife.
Licorish, S. A. and MacDonell, S. G. (2015). Communication and personality profiles of global software developers. Information and Software Technology, 64:113–131.
Lin, C., Standing, C., and Liu, Y.-C. (2008). A model to develop effective virtual teams. Decision Support Systems, 45:1031–1045.
Lowry, P., Roberts, T., Romano, N., Cheney, P., and Hightower, R. (2006). The impact of group size and social presence on small-group communication. Small Group Research, 37:631–661.
Mezouar, M. E., Costa, D. A. D., German, D. M., and Zou, Y. (2022). Exploring the use of chatrooms by developers: An empirical study on slack and gitter. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 48(10):3988–4001.
Neumayr, T., Saatci, B., Rintel, S., Klokmose, C. N., and Augstein, M. (2021). What was hybrid? a systematic review of hybrid collaboration and meetings research. arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.06172.
Noroozi, M. (2018). To slack or not to slack; challenges of communication and coordination in distributed software development. Master’s thesis, University of Oslo.
Olson, G. M. and Olson, J. S. (2000). Distance matters. Human-Computer Interaction, 15(2–3):139–178.
Quadros, E. L. L. D., Lisboa, A. S., Souza, M. Q. B., Prikladnicki, R., and Chaves, M. S. (2022). The migration from forced remote work to hybrid work and its impacts on software quality: the case of a multinational company. In Proceedings of the XXI Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality, pages 1–10, Curitiba, Brazil. ACM.
Ralph, P., Baltes, S., Adisaputri, G., Torkar, R., Kovalenko, V., Kalinowski, M., Novielli, N., Yoo, S., Devroey, X., Tan, X., Zhou, M., Turhan, B., Hoda, R., Hata, H., Robles, G., Fard, A. M., and Alkadhi, R. (2020). Pandemic programming: How COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help. Empirical Software Engineering, 25:4927–4961.
Runeson, P. and Höst, M. (2009). Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empirical Software Engineering, 14(2):131–164.
Santos, R. E. D. and Ralph, P. (2022). A grounded theory of coordination in remote-first and hybrid software teams. In Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 25–35.
Shi, L., Chen, X., Yang, Y., Jiang, H., Jiang, Z., Niu, N., and Wang, Q. (2021). A first look at developers’ live chat on Gitter. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, pages 391–403, Athens, Greece. ACM.
Silge, J. and Robinson, D. (2017). Text Mining with R. O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, CA.
Silva, C. C., Galster, M., and Gilson, F. (2022). A qualitative analysis of themes in instant messaging communication of software developers. Journal of Systems and Software, 192:111397.
Stray, V. and Barbala, A. (2024). Slack use in large-scale agile organizations: ESN tools as catalysts for alignment? In Šmite, D., Guerra, E., Wang, X., Marchesi, M., and Gregory, P., editors, Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, volume 512, pages 20–35. Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham.
Stray, V. and Moe, N. B. (2020). Understanding coordination in global software engineering: A mixed-methods study on the use of meetings and Slack. Journal of Systems and Software, 170:110717.
Stray, V., Moe, N. B., and Noroozi, M. (2019). Slack me if you can! using enterprise social networking tools in virtual agile teams. In 2019 ACM/IEEE 14th International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), pages 111–121, Montreal, QC, Canada. IEEE.
Thanthony, S., Marnewick, A., and Marnewick, C. (2022). Communication patterns and team performance within agile software development project. International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 15(1):118–146.
Vilaça, D. P. (2023). Uma análise exploratória de colaboração baseado em conversas exportadas do Slack (in Portuguese). PhD thesis.
Šmite, D., Christensen, E. L., Tell, P., and Russo, D. (2023a). The future workplace: Characterizing the spectrum of hybrid work arrangements for software teams. IEEE Software, 40(2):34–41.
Šmite, D. and Moe, N. (2023). Defining a remote work policy: Aligning actions and intentions. In Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops, pages 149–158.
Šmite, D., Moe, N. B., Klotins, E., and Gonzalez-Huerta, J. (2023b). From forced working-from-home to voluntary remote work after COVID-19: A study of the shift in developer intentions and preferences. Journal of Systems and Software, 195:111509.
Šmite, D., Moe, N. B., and Ågerfalk, P. J. (2010). Agility Across Time and Space: Implementing Agile Methods in Global Software Projects. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Webster, J. and Wong, W. K. P. (2008). Comparing traditional and virtual group forms: identity, communication and trust in naturally occurring project teams. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(1):41–62.
Yin, R. K. (2018). Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 6th edition.
Publicado
08/06/2026
Como Citar
SEVERO, Ricardo Augusto Niederauer Flores; LUCENA, Márcia Jacyntha Nunes Rodrigues; MEDEIROS JÚNIOR, Josué Vitor de; DE ANDRADE, Adrianne Paula Vieira.
Communication in Distributed Software Development: An exploratory study of Hybrid and Remote Teams. In: SIMPÓSIO BRASILEIRO DE SISTEMAS COLABORATIVOS (SBSC), 21. , 2026, Porto Alegre/RS.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2026
.
p. 271-285.
ISSN 2326-2842.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbsc.2026.20997.
