Dynamic networked organizations for software engineering
Damian A. Tamburri, Remco C. de Boer, Elisabetta Di Nitto, Patricia Lago, Hans J. van der Vliet · 2013
Current practice in software engineering suggests a radical change in perspective: where once stood fixed teams of people following a development plan, now stand just-in-time Dynamic Networked Organizations (DyNOs), adopting a common flexible strategy for development, rather than a plan. This shift in perspective has gone relatively unnoticed by current software engineering research. This paper offers a glimpse at what processes and instruments lie beyond “current” software engineering research, where studying emergent DyNOs, their creation and steering becomes critical. To understand the underpinnings of this evolution, we explored a simple yet vivid scenario from real-life industrial practice. Using scenario analysis we elicited a number of social and organizational requirements in working with DyNOs. Also, comparing our evidence with literature, we made some key observations. First, managing DyNOs makes organizational requirements a first-class entity for development success. Second, research in software engineering should be invested in understanding and governing the DyNOs behind the software lifecycle.