ITR: An Integrated Social and Technical Approach to the Development of Distributed, Inter-organizational Applications

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

Methods and technologies for effectively supporting application development have not kept pace with the changing character of applications and development groups. Applications increasingly span multiple organizations, involving thousands of interacting and heterogeneous computers. The creation and evolution of these inter-organizational systems typically involves many separate development organizations, who contribute to multiple software systems that must interact to support inter-organizational activities. This research project is focused on developing the knowledge for effectively building and evolving software for distributed inter-organizational systems and by distributed multi-organization teams. As the problem is intrinsically interdisciplinary, so is the approach. This project will create novel development methods and technologies based upon an integrated social and technological perspective. Insights come from many quarters. From a technical standpoint, the emergence of adaptive software architectures and event-based technologies suggest novel approaches to inter-organizational applications. On the social side, previous successes in coordination and awareness technologies must be brought to inter-organizational settings. An overarching concern is that inter-organizational settings provide no central authority - rather, social arrangements and interactions play dominant roles in shaping technology development and deployment. The project will be empirically grounded through research partnerships with four external organizations.