Supporting software development as knowledge-intensive and collaborative activity

Abstract

Starting from the belief that software development is a human activity, this paper tries to conceptualize software development as a knowledge-intensive design and distributed cognitive activity. This conceptualization leads to the argument that providing support for software developers to engage in knowledge collaboration with external knowledge repositories and peers is essential for software development environments. Technical and social challenges in providing such support are identified, and an illustrative system support that we have been developing is briefly described. Copyright 2006 ACM.