Fixing the ‘Out of sight out of mind’ problem one year of mood-based microblogging in a distributed software team

Abstract

Distributed teams face the challenge of staying connected. How do team members stay connected when they no longer see each other on a daily basis? What should be done when there is no coffee corner to share your latest exploits? In this paper we evaluate a microblogging system which makes this possible in a distributed setting. The system, WeHomer, enables the sharing of information and corresponding emotions in a fully distributed organization. We analyzed the content of over a year of usage data by 19 team members in a structured fashion, performed 5 semi-structured interviews and report our findings in this paper. We draw conclusions about the topics shared, the impact on software teams and the impact of distribution and team composition. Main findings include an increase in team-connectedness and easier access to information that is traditionally harder to consistently acquire.