Teaching

NWPER98 - Subworkshop on Change Management


Tools and Methods for Change Management

Rationale: Change management - what is it, how can it be used to support software development, and how can/should it be implemented?

Keywords: (user) experiences with change management, version control, configuration management, coordination, CSCW, distributed development.

Description: Working with the computer - whether developing programs or other documents - we inevitably create more versions of our document(s). Furthermore, "documents" are usually so big that they are composed and have an internal structure and thus need configuration management. How do we properly integrate these two aspects and handle the changes that naturally occur to our compound "document"?
In some (simple?) cases the problem has been solved, but how do we use this to support more complex cases? And can we use the single use solutions also for groups of people working together? Can change management be used to support CSCW (especially distribution) and what are the (special?) demands CSCW put on the change management system? Can (or should) change management methods be used to coordinate more peoples efforts?
We especially welcome user experiences with (lack of) change management, so you do not need to do research in the field to participate in this sub-workshop.

Form: The format of this sub-workshop will be a structured discussion, rather than a mini-conference. Participants will be asked to prepare one or more short (5 min. max.) discussion statements to encourage a very interactive exchange of ideas and research. Such statements can be based on research that has been carried out or on identified problems. The statements will be thrown in as needed to get the discussion moving in a positive direction.

The result of this sub-workshop will be a better common understanding of change management concepts and problems and an annotated list of research topics.

If you are interested in participating in this subworkshop, and/or have any comments or suggestions, please mail in advance to bendix@cs.auc.dk stating your topics of interest.

Organisers: Lars Bendix (bendix@cs.auc.dk),
Ulf Asklund (ulf@dna.lth.se)
Henrik Bærbak Christensen (hbc@daimi.aau.dk)

Programme:

Friday August 21 (16.30-18.30): Remote development: Software configuration management tools and common work practices has grown out from a situation where people as well as files has been in the same location. The common view on what functionality to associate with CM has been formed in this situation. Other aspects of system development has remained manual, without tool support, and handled by more or less informal meetings such as a chat over a cup of tea or in the corridor, meetings for code review, design discussions, task assignment, integration planning etc. When people who work closely together are geographically distributed we need to think about how these aspects can be supported in addition to how the traditional tasks are to be supported. We will discuss different occurences of remote development, especially the demanding situation that occurs when groups of people work together on common tasks, although geographically distributed. How do we compensate for (the lack of) informal meetings and face-to-face communication? How do/don't current tools support the different situations?

Saturday August 22 (16.00-18.00): Parts and wholes: We will focus on how to version complete programs and systems. Traditionally this has always been done by versioning the single parts, creating a version group for each module or unit in the system. This has the drawback that an explicit system model has to be created to describe the structure or architecture of the composed system - and that this system model has to be versioned separately. Lately, several alternative approaches, such as COOP/Orm, Ragnarok and CoEd, have emerged that version the whole system - its structure AND contents - as a single entity, thus avoiding explicit system models. We will discuss advantages and drawbacks of this new approach with respect to the traditional one.

Maintained by bendix@cs.lth.se