Social Patterns in Productive Software Development Organizations

Software development is a predominantly social activity. It is important to view software development groups, departments, and corporations as social bodies. We study software organizations by using a novel data-gathering approach that combines several techniques commonly used in social network analysis. We differ from ordinary social anthropology in that we help the organization introspect about itself; the technique is a “mirror” for the subject organization. We catalogued social network diagrams using a variety of visualization techniques. We have found visual patterns that correlate well to subjective measures of a good organization. We built analytical models to capture properties of the social networks, employing techniques similar to those used in established social network science. The emerging design technique based on architectural patterns provides a good vehicle for communicating organizational patterns. We have captured practices from outstanding organizations in a group of patterns that form a “pattern language” for productive software development.