Predicting Development Trajectories to Reduce Collaboration Conflicts

The benefits of collaborative development are reduced by the cost of resolving conflicts. We posit that reducing the time between when developers introduce and learn about conflicts reduces this cost. We outline the state-of-the-practice of managing and resolving conflicts and describe how it can be improved by available state-of-the-art tools. Then, we describe our vision for future tools that can predict likely conflicts before they are even created, warning developers and allowing them to avoid potentially costly situations. Author