E-Cooperation Patterns in Software Development Virtual Meetings

Developing and implementing software project is considered a teamwork effort that requires good collaboration and communication. Face-to-face meetings are not always feasible in some settings, such as, outsourcing, scattered stakeholders needed for requirements’ negotiating, remote quality team reviewers, etc. Designing successful virtual meeting sessions is generally a challenging task for a typical organizational management. Virtual distant, bandwidth limitation, and expensive hardware setting are some examples of such challenges facing managers when deciding to conduct their meeting in the online environments. Furthermore, assuming that by providing the most advanced communication tools it will ensure a successful virtual meeting is a mistaken belief. Providing software developers with communication tools included at the organization home page and expecting them to collaborate by using these tools might lead to many disappointments. Many organizational managers are reporting serious frustration when conducting virtual informal meetings with their employees. There are usually the risks that participants cannot start, get lost, or cannot reach the stated meeting’s objectives. There is a real need to shift our focus from tools to processes that include defined structures and formality when designing our virtual meeting. Designing a successful meeting process in the virtual environment is demanding. It is considered to be more resource intensive (facilitator’s time, effective planning, appropriate technical background, etc.) than designing and planning traditional face-to-face session. We believe that defining and applying OECP (Organizational E-Cooperation Patterns) should lead to more effective participants’ commitment in reaching meeting’s objectives. In this paper we will introduce E-Cooperation patterns used in e-learning field as a starting point for defining a wider set of OECPs. Many E-Cooperation patterns are already been used in the traditional software management sessions, such as Round Table Discussion, Brainstorming, Group Nomination, Debate, Jigsaw, Pro/Contra, etc. Finally, we will present several CSCL (Computer Support of Collaborative Learning) systems that could be used to support these types of patterns.