Collaborative Quality Assurance in Information Systems Development The Interaction of Software Development Techniques and Team Cognition

This book examines how and why collaborative quality assurance techniques, particularly pair programming and peer code review, affect group cognition and software quality in agile software development teams. Prior research on these extremely popular but also costly techniques has focused on isolated pairs of developers and ignored the fact that they are typically applied in larger, enduring teams. This book is one of the first studies to investigate how these techniques depend on and influence the joint cognitive accomplishments of entire development teams rather than individuals. It employs theories on transactive memory systems and functional affordances to provide answers based on empirical research. The mixed-methods research presented includes several in-depth case studies and survey results from more than 500 software developers, team leaders, and product managers in 81 software development teams. The book’s findings will advance IS research and have explicit implications for developers of code review tools, information systems development teams, and software development managers.

Introduction.- Theoretical Foundations.- Research Design.- Findings.- Discussion of Findings.- Conclusion.

Kai Spohrer is a researcher in the field of Information Systems, with a particular focus on the role of technology in team-based software development and the implications of IT innovations on collaboration in organizations. From 2010 to 2015 he worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Business School of the University of Mannheim, Germany. He was a visiting scholar at Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA in 2013. Previously Kai Spohrer studied Information Systems and Computer Science at the University of Mannheim and at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain. He received his diploma (M.Sc.) in Management Information Systems from the University of Mannheim in 2010.