Dr. James (Jim) Herbsleb visits our course on empirical software engineering and shares how the theory he developed was used to measure social technical coordination in real world projects.  Borrowing from organizational behavioural theories, Jim also discusses how communication concerning sources of complexity is particularly challenging when there is also uncertainty forcing a need for direct communication. We also discuss the challenges faced with collaboration today, but also explore the opportunities that the transparency of social coding tools and the ability to learn from open source brings. Finally, we discuss future work to investigate which communication channels are needed for optimal coordination in a project and how there is an even bigger need to design online or virtual environments that can mimic the benefits that colocation (at least within 30 metres) has.   

This Q&A was recorded live as part of a workshop on Collaboration, Communication and Knowledge Flow,  at a Senior Topics Course in Empirical Software Engineering at the University of Victoria on Nov 13th, 2020.  In preparation for today's workshop,  we read/watched materials posted on this page and in particular watched this video by James Herbsleb (keynote at ICSE 2014)   

This Q&A is also available on YouTube.