This book examines how and why collaborative quality assurance techniques particularly pair
programming and peer code review affect group cognition and software quality in agile software
development teams. Prior research on these extremely popular but also costly techniques has
focused on isolated pairs of developers and ignored the fact that they are typically applied in
larger enduring teams. This book is one of the first studies to investigate how these
techniques depend on and influence the joint cognitive accomplishments of entire development
teams rather than individuals. It employs theories on transactive memory systems and functional
affordances to provide answers based on empirical research. The mixed-methods research
presented includes several in-depth case studies and survey results from more than 500 software
developers team leaders and product managers in 81 software development teams. The book's
findings will advance IS research and have explicit implications for developers of code review
tools information systems development teams and software development managers.
