Auto-erecting Virtual Office Walls: A Controlled Experiment

A Virtual office wall is a mechanism which automatically regulates information to support distributed software engineers. These walls reduce the available information to only that information which is currently relevant. In this paper we present a controlled experiment with experienced software engineers as study participants. In this experiment we study whether there is a relation between the presence of virtual office walls and the actual and perceived speed and accuracy of the work carried out by the participants. Additionally, we measured the extent in which the participants experience the presence of virtual office walls as useful. The main findings include that virtual office walls appear to contribute to an improved awareness of co-worker synchronicity, an easier insight in what to do and a more concise overview of the work performed. These improvements mostly benefit the speed of coordination and the perception regarding overall performance.