Improving Remote Collaboration for Software Testing and Documentation

Abstract

The use of distributed engineering teams is becoming increasingly common in software development, which is a modern trend that faces challenges in communication, document sharing, and version control among others. The goal of this project was to enable better collaboration between a Massachusetts-based engineering team and their customer in Alabama by implementing a standardized system that used GitHub for version control and Confluence for document management. The Plan-Do-Check-Act framework was the guiding force throughout the implementation of the project, which involved analyzing current workflows, pilot testing, and assessing the tools’ performance. The results from the pilot stage indicated a 40% cut in document-sharing time, elimination of version conflicts, and enhancement of traceability via automated timestamping. User surveys disclosed a considerable degree of satisfaction regarding the new system, though some areas requiring training were also identified. The research demonstrates that the combining of automation and version control has benefited distributed environments in terms of collaboration efficiency and information accuracy and henceforth, the same frameworks can be applied to future projects to ensure that the benefits of training and learning are enjoyed in a continuous manner, through sustainability and improvement.