Effect of Temporal Patterns on Task Cohesion in Global Software Development Teams

Abstract

This work focuses on the analysis of temporal measures and their ability to predict task cohesion within global software development projects. Messages were collected from three software development projects that involved students from two different countries. The similarities and quantities of these interactions were computed and analyzed at individual and group levels. We proposed pacing similarity, pacing rate and synchrony, a set of temporal metrics measuring frequency and rhythm of team member’s interactions. Results showed a statistically significant negative correlation between pacing rate and task cohesion, which suggests that frequent communications increases the cohesion between team members. The study also found a positive correlation between synchrony and task cohesion, which indicates the importance of establishing a communication rhythm within members a team. In addition, the temporal models at individual and group-levels were found to be good predictors of task cohesion, which indicates the existence of a strong effect of frequent and rhythmic communications on cohesion related to the task.