TEES Assistant Research Professor and Fulbright Senior Scholar Dr. Ronnie Ward presented "Communication Behaviors of International Software Development Teams" at the 4th Mid-Year Conference for U.S. Fulbright Scholars in Southeast Asia that was held in Hanoi, Vietnam on March 14-17, 2012. “The report was very well received and will be highlighted in the next Annual Report of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, published by the Department of State,” said Dr. Ward.
“Importantly, Fulbright Scholars are cultural ambassadors. In that regard, this work has a unique ‘multiplier-effect’ on cultural exchange. Teaming Aggies with Indonesian students to develop software creates lots of technical and social interchange,” Ward notes.
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| ITB informatics majors |
The talk began with a description of his collaboration last fall with Dr. Daugherity*, which was reported in the news article, “Drs. Ward and Daugherity promote global learning.” Dr. Ward then outlined the work being done this spring semester by the students in Dr. Daugherity's CSCE 121 and ENGR 112 sections at Texas A&M University and his informatics students in the School of Electrical Engineering & Informatics at Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) in Indonesia.
Teams comprised of 28 students from ITB and 32 students from Texas A&M are developing an online electronics store in C++. Ward is researching the communication behaviors of two types of teams—those whose work is directed by making organizational changes—appointing project leaders and test engineers, for example, with teams whose work is managed by adding components to the software solution architecture—for example, adding new types to the solution.
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| Texas A&M computer science students (gig 'em!) |
Team communications are categorized as project planning, contributing, seeking input, communicating and socializing. "So far the teams have exchanged over five thousand messages and the organizationally directed teams always exhibit lower communication levels than the architecturally directed teams. They even socialize less, which is interesting. Hopefully, further analysis will yield why," said Dr. Ward.
The teams have already moved to the graphics portion of their project by converting their console based solutions to a GUI interface. Both professors are anxious to see how this might impact future team communications as the solutions grow in complexity. “Global engineering teams are the norm today,” says Dr. Ward. “We hope to help industry improve its strategies to efficiently deliver complex solutions to the marketplace.”
* Dr. Walter Daugherity is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University.
Thank you Jan for the update on Ronnie's work. VERY impressive. How fortunate for Texas A&M that Ronnie is leading this study. And how lucky the students are in Bandung to have him teaching them. Great story and pictures.
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