How Software Developers Mitigate Collaboration Friction with Chatbots

TL;DR

This paper investigates how chatbots can alleviate collaboration challenges faced by software developers, focusing on social and technical friction points in team communication and proposing open research questions.

Contribution

It introduces a socio-technical model to identify collaboration friction points and explores the role of chatbots in mitigating these issues in software development teams.

Findings

Identifies three main areas of collaboration friction.

Proposes chatbots as a solution to reduce social and technical conflicts.

Provides open research questions for future exploration.

Abstract

Modern software developers rely on an extensive set of social media tools and communication channels. The adoption of team communication platforms has led to the emergence of conversation-based tools and integrations, many of which are chatbots. Understanding how software developers manage their complex constellation of collaborators in conjunction with the practices and tools they use can bring valuable insights into socio-technical collaborative work in software development and other knowledge work domains. In this paper, we explore how chatbots can help reduce the friction points software developers face when working collaboratively. Using a socio-technical model for collaborative work, we identify three main areas for conflict: friction stemming from team interactions with each other, an individual's interactions with technology, and team interactions with technology. Finally, we provide a set of open questions for discussion within the research community.