On-Demand Collaboration in Programming

Abstract

Many teams have shifted to online remote collaboration as a result of COVID-19, from professional development teams to programming classes to computing-related workspaces. This paper explores on-demand remote help seeking in programming, a type of collaboration that occurs when developers seek online support for their tasks as needed. Traditionally, this collaboration happens within teams and organizations where people are familiar with the context of the tasks. Recently, this collaboration has become ubiquitous due to the success of paid online crowdsourcing marketplaces (e.g., Upwork) and Q&A sites (e.g., Stack Overflow). We discuss prior work in the field of on-demand collaboration in software development, analyze how the idea can be tested in programming areas like physical computing, and examine existing and new challenges that should be further explored.

Many teams have shifted to online remote collaboration as a result of COVID-19, from professional development teams to programming classes to computing-related workspaces. This paper explores on-demand remote help seeking in programming, a type of collaboration that occurs when developers seek online support for their tasks as needed, and argues that a key challenge in scaling remote on-demand collaboration in programming is to facilitate effective context capturing and workforce coordination. Traditionally, this collaboration happens within teams and organizations where people are familiar with the context of the tasks. Recently, this collaboration has become ubiquitous due to the success of paid online crowdsourcing marketplaces (e.g., Upwork) and Q\&A sites (e.g., Stack Overflow). We discuss prior work on on-demand collaboration in programming, analyze how the idea can be tested in physical computing as well, and examine existing and new challenges that should be further explored.