William Beachley
Assignment 3

1) Visit one of the following websites and explore it

http://www.experts-exchange.com/

2) Briefly discuss for your chosen website:

what did you find interesting about it?
Experts Exchange is a site I have used before as I work in tech
support. What I don't like about it is that it is hard to get
answers to questions unless you buy points or pay for the
service. The more points you have, the higher the priority
you can make your questions. It is truly a wealth of information
for anyone in a technology field.

in which way is it related to "collaboration"?
It is a huge bulletin board in which people ask questions about
any kind of computer problem and receive answers. It is
a collaboration of geeks. Any problem you could possibly be
having, someone else has had the same problem, and most
likely, the solution is somewhere on experts exchange.
Sometimes people carry on a thread like a conversation. If
a response did not contain a solution that worked or the
solution needs clarification, one can ask another question or
ask for clarification. This can go on for a while if someone
is really stuck with something and has tried everything.
The site is very collaborative.

how does it compare with the Swiki used for our class?
One can look at what other people have to say about problems
we are experiencing now. On Swiki, we can look at what other
students have submitted for their homework. A dynamically
editable website like Swiki is very similar to what a bulletin board
is.

3) have you ever read a book(s) / article(s) (or books)
about collaboration? if yes:
The one book that comes to mind other than the papers we've
read in class is The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software
Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks. Although it is not entirely
about collaboration, the issue comes up a lot as collaboration
is a huge part of software engineering.

choose the most important one
provide title and one paragraph what you found interesting about it!
It talks a lot about the challenges of collaborating in a software
project with a large number of engineers of varying ability. What I
found it interesting about it is how timeless it is. We are still facing
many of the same challenges today such as communication failures
among large development teams. It states that collaboration in
software development is optimal in smaller teams of four to five
people.