An Architecture to Support Learning, Awareness, and Transparency in Social Software Engineering

Wolfgang ReinhardtSascha Rinne

University of PaderbornInstitute of Computer Science

if you want to tweet

#icl09

#mashl09

#mashl09_5D

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Social Software Engineering

• ambivalent term

• social activities represent a substantial part of daily development work

• developers not only communicate, they connect through shared artefacts

• social connections to people inside and outside the project

• other projects, knowledge bases, bulletin boards, developer lists etc.

• domain experts do often not reside within the own organisation

3

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Learning and KM in software projects

• learning and understanding takes place by sharing of information and ad hoc exchange of short messages

• inter-project networks are very important for learning in groups

4

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Collaborative Development Environments (CDE)

• mostly focussed on one single project

• support most stages of a developer‘s work

• several stages of maturity, most mature CDEs „encourage a vibrant community of practice“

5

„A virtual space wherein all stakeholders of a project - even if distributed by time or distance - may negotiate, brainstorm, discuss, share knowledge, and generally labor together to carry out some task, most often to create an executable deliverable and its supporting artifacts“

Booch & Brown, 2003

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Existing approaches

• Trac and Assembla

• Focussed on single projects

• Lists of recent actions

• Sourceforge and Github

• sites that handle multiple projects

• free and paid hosting

• main tools for software development included (tracker, version control, file mgmt.)

6

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Lack of Transparency and Awareness

• many systems / tools used during software project

• lists of events are hard to understand

• many events not interesting for all people involved

• common focus on single projects, no support for project-spanning exchange

• no easy way of finding domain experts and contact persons

• community often resides outside the hosting platform

• found help is externalised somewhere else, cannot be reused

7

Solution Design

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Basic ideas and goals

• Platform that hosts multiple projects

• easy creation of new project for anyone

• allowing project-spanning exchange of expert knowledge and experiences

• embedding in a vibrant community

• Mashups as design pattern

• leaving subsystems as they are and integrate events

• enhancing artefact- and person awareness and make process more understandable and transparent

9

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Organisational Requirements

• embedding of project-related activities in a community-context

• Community-embedded Cooperative Development Environment (CCDE)

• easy adding of new developers

• using commonly well-known software without making adaptions to it

• automatic creation of instances of all required tools

• allowing project-spanning expert exchange

10

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Data sources in SE projects

11

• Repository

• Issue Tracker

• Wiki

• Roadmap Planning

• Blog / Microblog

• E-Mail

• Calendar

• Instant Messaging

• Audio/Video-Conferencing

• Social Bookmarks

• RSS Feeds

• Bulletin boards

• Shared Whiteboards

• ........

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Mashup as design pattern

12

• using standard software to meet organisational and technical requirements

• Repository: Subversion

• Wiki: MediaWiki

• Blog: Wordpress

• Microblog: StatusNet aka Laconi.ca

• Issue Tracker, Roadmap planning, source code browser: Trac

• integration via a meta-navigation bar

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Event-based architecture

• subsystems serve as EventProvider

• adapter provides basic event data for eCopSoft core

• analyzers investigate according action / artefact more deeply

• semantical analysis of text-based artefacts, code-analysis and people tagging

• IntegrationLayer

• association of events / users / projects

• provides the API

13

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Semantic Web Approaches

• storage of all users and events in Artefact-Actor-Network

• layers of systems

• semantical relations between artefact / users

• interconnecting project spaces

14

consolidated social network

consolidated artefact network

Organization

Projectspace A Projectspace B Projectspace C

isReferencedBy

referencing

isUsed

uses

isSupervisorOf

isSupervisedBy

isAuthormodfier

owner

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Overall architecture (very schematical)

15

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Creating Awareness & Transparency

16

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Widget-like User Interface

17

What is still to do?

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Conclusion

• embedding a CDE into a community

• supporting knowledge sharing and individual learning through ad-hoc communication

• Mashup of various well-known tools to support the development process

• connecting multiple separate projects

19

© W

olfg

ang

Rei

nhar

dt, U

nive

rsity

of P

ader

born

Wolfgang Reinhardt

Outlook

• End implementation ;)

• Complex Event Processing (CEP)

• aggregate events to gain a deeper understanding or to alarm people in the project (traffic light system)

• field test of the platform with student groups at UPB

• roll out as open platform for all students, employees and working groups at the UPB

• assess the usage and quality of project-spanning helps

• Web-based and Desktop Widgets that allow staying up-to-date20

Want to know more? http://twitter.com/wollepbhttp://isitjustme.dehttp://artefact-actor-networks.net

Thank you

Wolfgang ReinhardtUniversity of Paderborn

Institute of Computer ScienceWorking Group Didactics of Informatics

http://ddi.upb.de

Image sources

• http://de.fotolia.com/id/3805293

• http://www.sxc.hu/photo/282237

• http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1011829

• http://www.sxc.hu/photo/317067

23