A field study of the software design process for large systems
Open accessAbstract
The problems of designing large software systems were studied through interviewing personnel from 17 large projects. A layered behavioral model is used to analyze how three of these problems—the thin spread of application domain knowledge, fluctuating and conflicting requirements, and communication bottlenecks and breakdowns—affected software productivity and quality through their impact on cognitive, social, and organizational processes.
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Groups in a virtual team may have different backgrounds that need reconciliation because organizations within a group can have different expertise and experience, creating incompatible views.
“In addition to differences in technical language, various groups within a virtual team may have different backgrounds that need to be reconciled, as different organizations within a group may have different expertise and experience that create incompatible views [55].”
From Challenges and barriers in virtual teams: a literature review (2020) · cites this paper as [55]
The Business Milieu section reports that companies working together understood the application through their own product lines, clashed over differing assumptions, and needed extended coordination to resolve misunderstandings. The source supports the point about organizational backgrounds producing conflicting views, but the passage concerns multicompany software-design teams, not specifically virtual teams. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredCreating a project-specific technical language is difficult, yet important enough for collaboration that technology should assist it.
“The development of a project-specific technical language is not an easy task [17,55,172,252], but is important enough to collaboration to warrant assistance from technology.”
From Challenges and barriers in virtual teams: a literature review (2020) · cites this paper as [55]
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“…turnover, measured and priced [Rigby 2016; Robillard 2021]; documentation that goes stale silently [OutdatedDocs 2023]; domain knowledge thinly spread as a root cause of failure [Curtis 1988]; and developers relying on interruption and archaeology because knowledge lives in heads [LaToza 2006].”
- Authors
- Curtis, B., Krasner, H., & Iscoe, N.
- Affiliations
- Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp., Austin, TX
- Lockheed (United States) (US)
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Venue
- Communications of the ACM
- Published
- 1988-11
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1268-1287
- ISSN
- 0001-0782 (ISSN-L)
- 1557-7317
- OpenAlex
- W2045571829
- Semantic Scholar
- ad8c252b961ff026aea8bea0fda4bf9dd5b6652d
- Cited by
- 2,076
- References
- 59
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 35 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 39 · 2016: 43 · 2015: 61 · 2014: 65 · 2013: 81 · 2012: 82
- FWCI
- 100.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Communications of the ACM (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- University of Texas at Austin
- Strong
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Keywords
- software design process, large software systems, software productivity, software quality, conflicting requirements, communication bottleneck, organizational processes, cognitive processes, social processes
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