Web2se Black et al

A Survey of Social Media Use in Software Systems Development

Sue Black, Rachel Harrison and Mark Baldwin

Cite as: Black, S. E., Harrison, R. and Baldwin, M., A Survey of Social Media Use in Global Systems Development, Web2SE Workshop at IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Cape Town, May 4th 2010.

Social media is a term used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online. Where media means digital words, sounds & pictures which are typically shared via the internet and the value can be cultural, societal or even financial.

Wikipedia 2010

Giles, M., 2010. A world of connections. Special report on social networking. The Economist, London. 30th January-5th February 2010.

What is your gender?

30%

63%

7%

Female

Male

No response

Comparison of education and gender

024

68

10

Bache

lors

Degre

eM

aste

rs

Degre

e Other

PhD

High

Schoo

l

Female

Male

How old are you?

7

109

1

3

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 Noresponse

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

No response

How long have you worked for your current employer?

02468

10

<1 year 1-2 years 2-5 years 5-10 years 10 years + Noresponse

Total

10

6

13

11

2

15

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Facebook

Googlewave

IM client

Linkedin

Plaxo

Twitter

Comparison of Social Media types used

0

51015

2025

Asia Europe No response NorthAmerica

On which physical continent do you work?

Total

Number of Social Media types used

45

7

32

31

5

02468

0 2 4 6

Number of types used

Num

ber

of p

eopl

e

0% 50% 100%

New ideas

System specificationinformation

System design information

Source code and relatedinformation

Operational data

Marketing data

Logistics

Social information

What information do you communicate using social media?

Total yes

Total no

Total No response

“I use social media the entire time I'm at work - it's on constantly and I use it concurrently with other applications. If I was to pull out the time on

various forms of social media and put them into one block it'd be about 30 minutes a day on average, spread over an 8 or 9 hour day.”

How many hours per day do you use social media applications to communicate?

13

6

1

10

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

0-2 3-5 6-8 No response

What can your team do now that they could not do before social media?

“Communicate out of hours, conveniently and from any suitable device”“Avoid having to turn to email as primary communication tool”“Communicate rapidly”“Work from home to a greater degree”“Ask questions without interrupting each other's flow; clarify small

questions quickly; chat informally while working”“work from different locations”“access more expertise”“ensure transparency”“work with open source community”

91% of respondents said that using social media at work has improved their working life

Many thanks to all of our respondents for their time

Sue Black and Joanne Jacobs

Using Web 2.0 to Improve Software Quality

Cite as: Black, S. E. and Jacobs, J. Using Web 2.0 to Improve Software Quality, Web2SE Workshop at IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Cape Town, May 4th 2010.

The Neilson Company. 2010. Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/led-by-facebook-twitter-global-time-spent-on-social-media-sites-up-82-year-over-year/

Universal McCann, 2009. Wave 4 Research : Power to the People, social media tracker. http://universalmccann.bitecp.com/wave4/Wave4.pdf)

Six variants of social media

1. Blogs (Eg: Slashdot, Mashable, Read Write Web, celebrity tech blogs and known user blogs)

2. Social networking platforms (Eg: facebook, MySpace, Bebo)

3. Social bookmarking (Eg: Del.icio.us, digg, reddit, Metafilter)

4. Microblogging and short messaging tools (Eg: Twitter, Friendfeed)

5. Media content sharing networks (Eg: YouTube, Flickr, Qik, 12Seconds)

6. Full immersion interactive environment and gaming (Eg: Second Life, World of Warcraft)

Universal McCann, 2009. Wave 4 Research : Power to the People, social media tracker. http://universalmccann.bitecp.com/wave4/Wave4.pdf)

Adapted from Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, “Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System,” Harvard Business Review (January-February 1996): 76.

Balanced ScorecardPerspective Quote (developer)

Financial/timed delivery: Transparency enables delivery on time and on budget.

Clients have a better understanding of what is involved in this work, see the issues that they cause,

and provide better information as a direct result. (Laurie)

Customer experience: Social media provide baseline interaction design standards

By tracking entire industries as well as pertinent figures, it has allowed other ideas into the software resulting in "out of the box" results, improving end

user productivity. (Horne)

Internal processes: Can speed up or at least maximise efficiency of internal processes

for projects of low numbers of developers or for developers spread across large geographical spaces (and time zones)

Communication becomes more fluid, especially when people do not understand or agree. (Horne)

Innovation and learning: Problem solving is enabled and traditional barriers of space and time zones in collaborative software

development programmes can be overcome.

Not only does it allow us to share ideas on best practice methodologies, but it also allows us to share code snippets and collaborate with colleagues from

around the world. (Harald)

Name Type of system/software

Social Media tools used

Benefits Quote

Beech Horn Business apps with web and mobile interfaces

Google Wave, Twitter, Stack Overflow, Delicious

Speeds up development time, more in depth knowledge available

“a real winner”

“out of the box results”

Harry Harald Boredometer web app

Social bookmarks, wikis, blogs

Wiki: updatable repository, helps sharing of learning in team, shorter development time

Hugh Fisher Visualisation and 3D graphics, small OSS

IRC, IM, email “what you do counts, not who you know”

Greve Harold Web based business app for DCMS

Online forums, community websites, wikis

Can share ideas on best practice and code snippets

“social media has had an impact on the quality of the projects I’ve worked on”

Peter Laurie Many: mobile apps and web tools to integration projects

Blogs, microblogs, wikis,

Helps project communication, better and cleaner info

Many thanks to all of our interviewees for their time

Conclusion

Social media brings many benefits to the software development process, improving quality through:

• Faster and easier problem solving• More rapid and comprehensive testing• Ongoing user feedback• Easier to share best practice• More communication between stakeholders• More information available for decision making