Trusty: A tool to improve communication and collaboration in DSD

Abstract

Distributed Software Development (DSD) projects frequently confront the problem of a lack of face-to-face interaction, which is a great obstacle in informal communication. Since informal communication is the means by which people normally discover facts about their co-workers, thus leading to their mutual trust, we have designed a tool called Trusty with which to support DSD. In this paper we describe the main characteristics of Trusty, which provides mechanisms to support communication, coordination, knowledge management and other capabilities such as the statistical analysis of those networks which are valuable in virtual environments. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.