How Social Software Supports Cooperative Practices in a Globally Distributed Software Project

In Global Software Development (GSD), the lack of face- to-face communication is a major challenge and effective computer-mediated practices are necessary. This paper analyzes cooperative practices supported by Social Software (SoSo) in a GSD student project. The empirical results show that the role of SoSo is to support informal communication, enabling social talks and metawork, both necessary for establishing and for maintaining effective coordination mechanisms, thus successful cooperation.