Designing the Working Process — What Programmers Do Beside Programming

Abstract

This discussion presents, as a result of my own empirical studies, a description of software development as a social process with special problems and risks: vagueness of requirements, hierarchical and other organizational barriers, the necessity of negotiation and informal communication, heterogeneous tasks and so forth. This description is based on a model of cooperative creative work which understands programmers activities as subjective assimilation of constraints resulting from the materiality of the subject, given organizational structures, and the cultural differences between various groups as participating actors. Finally I discuss the problem of supplying this working process with adequate methods and tools.