Abstract
Ample evidence in the literature emphasizes using socio-technical congruence (STC) to address coordination issues in distributed software development. The recent decades have shown a progressive growth in STC, resulting in an increasing number of research studies in the scientific corpora. However, no existing study has systematically analyzed and illustrated the research patterns, latest trends, and evolution in STC. This study aims to explore the knowledge structure and create evolutionary trajectories from STC publications. To achieve this aim, a scientometric analysis is performed that combined a critical literature review (CLR) of STC-related published research in the Web of Science and Scopus databases from 2000 to 2020. The scientometric analysis is conducted through four scientometric techniques: 1) co-word network analysis; 2) co-author network analysis; 3) co-citation analysis; 4) document clustering with timeline analysis. The study outcomes will help understand and visualize STC’s research status quo. CLR is objectively conducted to recognize the latest research topics, themes, and salient features of STC research in software development. A total of 306 bibliographic data are analyzed to generate study-related networks and density visualizations. The results reveal an evolution in the STC field from its conception to the recent developments of STC models and other related factors. This study primarily contributes to the literature by providing a systematic view related to STC research to assist software practitioners in identifying applications and key research areas. Moreover, the combination of scientometric analysis and CLR reveals key researchers, journals and conferences, institutions, prominent contributing countries, and six major research themes, including “community structure” and “socio-technical congruence” as the most prominent ones.
Highlights
Software development is a complex mechanism due to its inherently multidimensional nature[1]
This study focuses on the scientometric methodology to present a holistic analysis of socio-technical congruence (STC) concerning software development activities
STC has started gaining the attention of researchers due to the development of large-scale, high-quality software for numerous fields
Summary
Software development is a complex mechanism due to its inherently multidimensional nature[1]. The distributed organization of team members increases the need for coordination and collaboration among team members. Dependencies among tasks change over time, given the dynamic nature of software development, which perturbs team coordination efficiency. The coordination and collaboration mechanisms must align with the underlying project’s organization to accommodate the dynamic changes in task dependencies. STC focuses on social and technical aspects of the software development process and a fit indicates the right fusion of social and technical abilities within a distributed team. STC helps measure the team coordination level, which helps an organization identify gaps that induce delays in work and results or overall project failure[3].
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