The learning component in social software engineering

The interactions that occur in a software engineering context, both face-to-face and virtual and from the mundane to the professional have many purposes. Professional interactions can be planned or ad hoc, and their purposes are both varied and intertwined. They could serve to build trust, or be used to share or acquire knowledge or knowhow. In this paper, we contend that an important component of social software engineering is learning. A model, based on existing learning theory, is proposed to describe the knowledge and knowhow content of professional social software engineering. The model is applied within the context of an observational study in a professional environment where ad hoc interactions are audio-visually recorded. We found that 60% of the social software engineering occurring within this collocated team was aimed at improving knowhow on the use of tools, while 40% of the interactions were conducted for the purpose of acquiring knowledge on the application to be implemented.