Process: Elaborate on STTC

[amyjko]

Something that I thought could be better explained is Herbsleb’s Socio-Technical Theory of Coordination. I felt that though the chapter did explain what his theory was, it failed to give examples of how his studies demonstrated “predictive and explanatory power”. I think it would be nice to have an example of a study that he did and the result to understand more about why software projects are so hard to manage.

Something I was confused on was what social constraints actually meant when defining Herbsleb’s Socio-Technical Theory of Coordination. Is this specific to the ways the team internally communicates about their work, or can this also be related to the ways the technology is design in regards to greater social contexts, issues, and environment? I think it would be helpful to have a specific example of how an organization is related to this theory. This might mean some more time for me to look into, but in general I'm curious still as to why (and how) technical dependencies define the social constraints and not the other way around.

In this chapter, the author discussed the different approaches to project management ranging from the waterfall model to the spiral model to the agile model. Though beyond project management, researchers discovered other factors are involved in creating a successful team and software; awareness, ownership, pace, and distance. One thing I wished the author covered a little bit more about was Herbsleb’s Socio-technical theory of coordination (STTC) and the role it plays in managing processes and creating an environment where developers, PMs, designers, and users can work and interact with one another. Furthermore, I think it would be interesting to see how STTC differs from Agile or scrum which is are common methods used in the industry.

After reading the chapter on “Process” I kind of wished that the chapter talked more about Herbsleb’s Socio-Technical Theory of Coordination (STTC). After reading the short excerpt of the theory, I know that I have used this theory before while programming. I feel like it would be nice to add about how Herbsleb came up with the idea and how this theory was popularized. Knowing the background of a theory can greatly help some people understand how the theory works in general!

A concept that I would like to be better explained is Herbsleb's Socio-Technical Theory of Coordination. It would be interesting to see how examples of this concept could lead to fewer defects. After reading the chapter, I found this concept to be important in developing a successful product and a more detailed explanation can lead to my better understanding. Discuss tools

This chapter explains different processes of project management well, such as the “waterfall” method, spiral method, and “agile” method. Specifically, it was easy to understand the pros and cons of using each method. One critique I have is that the team productivity tools (Slack, Trello, GitHub, and JIRA) were mentioned briefly, and I would have liked to learn more about how to use them. What are the benefits of each tool and what makes one tool better to use than the other?