Chapter 4: Data analyzes and interpretation

It is widely accepted that software engineering process is highly collaborative and complex
process in its all dimensions. It needs high team effort, technological support, engineering
knowledge and a perfect control and coordination system. Communication and social interaction
among team members is one of the critical element in collaborative process of software
development, since the organization have to design large software system with global
collaboration by satisfying the diverse needs of clients all over the globe. Software development
is a knowledge oriented process, a developer can learn and collaborate with another developer
for acquiring quality, productivity and problem solving. This point outs the importance of a
social networking system in a software developing company more than any other organization.
According to the research conducted by Clear Swift commission (2010), more than 20 percent of
IT companies are already making effective use of Social Medias inside their organization to
strengthen their businesses.
Infosys limited is one among top Indian IT organization started their operation in 1981, with
current revenue of US$ 6.35 billion. Infosys can be caught as a classic example for the effective
incorporation of advanced technological opportunities in their business. Company have a number
of technological platforms like global delivery model, social networking, process and quality
tools, work flow management, knowledge management etc. According to Infosys project
manager Company gives strict priorities to client satisfaction, employee motivation and
satisfaction, communication and interaction. Infosys have a global foot print with 63
development centers and 63 offices all over the globe with 133,560 employees. Thus company
believes that social interaction between their employees can contribute much to the global
collaboration and coordination in addition to the productivity and quality gain. This part of the
research critically evaluates the social networking practices of Infosys and its impact on the
efficiency of project developer. For this, the discussion will go through positive as well as
negative aspect regarding the social networking activities of the organization with different
modes of social networking communication.


4.1 Software engineering and social networking tools
According to the survey conducted for this research hundred percent (34 out of 34) of the
employees accepts the fact that they make use of the social networking applications while they
work. This shows the overview about the usage of social applications tools inside the software
engineering environment of Infosys. Lot of feature are includes to the integrated development
environment (IDE) of the organization for focusing on the purposes like coordination,
collaboration, support and communication. Use of Social Medias or web 2.0 technologies in the
development environment is actually becoming an unavoidable factor in software industry even
though control and security is challenge. The survey results point outs that, developers use social
media inside the organization to collaborate global activities and support. In order to cope with
the tight competition in the market, organizations must adapt the wide range of innovative social
media tools. Since the organization has to ensure security and confidentiality, Infosys has
designed their own social networking media tools with better control and security, other than
promoting face book and Twitter in work place.
Before going into analyzes and evaluation stage of this research, lets have a brief idea about the
different social networking 2.0 features organization making use to deliver global quality
software products. According to Infosys, the social media applications of the organization
actually integrated a wide range of process and development tools from IDE (Integrated
Development Environment) and CDE (Collaborative Development Environment) to support
software development activities as well as individual learning. According to the Manager, Every
time when the system is updates, more and more social media tools and features are adopted and
integrated to the software engineering environment. To get a more clear view about how these
social media applications supports software engineering process, Lets have a quick discussion
about some of the important social media features Infosys making use in their software
engineering practice.
Wikis: Wikis are one of the important tools which strengthen the collaboration inside the
organization. Some of the main use of wikis in software engineering is documentation, support,
requirement tracking, defect tracking etc. Wikis allows multi users to add, remove and edit
content information and act as knowledge source for the developers.
Blogs: Through blogging employees and self publish their views and opinions in the form of
online journals and articles. Blog owner will periodically post information and the readers can
comment up on the updates. This is one of the most interactive feature Infosys employees
making use to social relationship.
Micro blogs: This is normally uses maintain communication between software developers for
coordination. Unlike blogging, here content of exchange will be small like short sentences,
documents pictures, videos etc
Tagging: It is generally a keyword to track the content on the portal. In Infosys tagging is
generally uses in project portals so that the developer can tag issues, solution, project release etc.
This enables the developers to increase the flexibility and saves time.
Collaborative real time editors: This is one of the most useful social media tools which allow
editing the content of a file, text or any other document by different developers on a network at
the same time.
Feeds: This circulates the important information and updates inside the organization
automatically with updates the content frequently. This helps the developers to receive
awareness about the working environment, processes new procedures etc.
Forums: This is the main means of support for the developers from the experts, developers can
communicate, make discussions and conversations. Unlike from the chat forms can hold the
conversions as posted messages so that other developers can refer this information for their
problem solving.
4.2 Positive and Negative aspect of Social Networking on Employee Efficiency
These are some of the important social networking features Infosys incorporates to their software
engineering environment. Research now commences through positive and negative aspects of
these features in relation to the efficiency of the software developers inside the organization.


4.2 Positive aspects of SNS
4.2.1 Interaction and collaboration
Every software development organization must have a well organized and standardized internal
project management and work follow management system. These facilitate collaboration of
global operations and coordinates efforts of work force globally, automatically according to the
dynamic project environment. It is highly important that the system must ensure right
information at the right time to the right person. Infosys have more than 120 offices and
developing centers all over the globe. So employees from different geographical location and
time zone must interact and collaborate effectively so that better task coordination and work
quality can be acquired according to the global standard. If the support and guidance social
networking system helps employees to reduce his time spend on the project without losing
quality, it will boost overall productivity and efficiency of employees. Since time is money, this
will improve the profitability as well. For acquiring these benefits employees have the right
provision to interact and make shared relationship so that they achieve same goal. According to
the Manager, social networking tools of Infosys actually makes effective use of the inherent
computer communication technologies (web 2.0) to enable group interaction and relationship
between Infosys employees all over the globe regardless to the time and geographical location.
In the survey as well most of the employees have given positive replay to this fact. Details of the
questionnaire replay are given in the graph given below.


0
10
20
30
40
Positive Neutral Negative
SNS Vs Employee Interaction and
collabration
Project Associatives
Senior Associatives
Total

4.2.2 Personal relationship inside the organization
In addition to the social network interaction and support tools, Infosys have an exact social
networking feature called Infosys bubble. Bubble is a Facebook type social networking site
specially designed for enhancing personal relationship between employees as well as their fun
and refreshment. Infosys bubble is an intra- firm social networking space, proved to be
successful with their large employee base. Through these employees can share their thoughts,
pictures, blogs and make relationship regardless to the work pressure and other job oriented
issues. According to the Infosys, Bubble has already 261,000 connections and 74,376 profiles
among employees. Even though company encourages the freedom and fun for the employees,
some restrictions and control over use of bubble, like posting personal comments to maintain
discipline in this social platform.
According to the Senior Vice President of Infosys, We understood the need of communication
and social interaction among Infosys employees so we implemented Bubble, in addition
company also planning to launch an in-house radio called Infy radio very soon ( Nandita Gurjar
,VO Infosys)
Through social network, organization could maintain potential relationship among employees,
which ultimately leads to potential ties. Normally employees uses this relationship to discuss
work related matters , so that they will get help and support which will ultimately reflect in the
efficiency of the employee. In another way, employees require social feedback for all his
contributions. Social feedback will help to rectify employee problems and is essential for the
growth of individual as well as organization. Social feedback is essential in the formation of a
digital reputation and it allows other users to rate the contributions of others. (Brown & Dugid,
2000). In the survey, 18 out of 34 accept that, they are an active user of Infosys bubble. Details
of the replay is shown in the table given below,
Project Associative
(24)
Senior Engineer
(10)
Total (34)
Positive 10 08 18
Neutral 05 02 07
Negative 09 00 09

Survey replay shows that a good percent of project associative are not an active user of Infosys
bubble. Only 53 % (18 out of 34) is in favor for Infosys bubble. In order to make a sound
argument, lets take the correlation analysis the replay. As per the correlation analysis, the usage
of Infosys bubble increases with employees experience in the organization. Out of the 9 negative
replays, seven is from project associative with less than one year experience and out of 5 neutral
replays two is from employees with less experience.


The graph strengthens the argument that as the experience increase, use of social networking
tools also increases inside the organization. According to the Project Manager, Since a lot of
other social networking facilities like blogging, wikis, forums, live chatting , messaging etc are
integrated to the collaborative workflow management system, project associative are less
attracted to Infosys bubble. This can also be point out as another reason of unavoidable number
of negative and neutral replays in the survey for the particular question.


4.2.3 Global contact list
Another important benefit of social networking in business is that it helps employees in the
organization to make a global list of contact details. This contact list is entirely different from
other electronic directories, because it will updates automatically with any profile differences,
current activities, special interests, skills etc. In addition all these information will be in
searchable format. According to the manager, most of the employees in the organization making
use of this personal contact list available from social networking tools to increase their efficiency
in work. In the survey as well, about 28 out of 34 participants agreed to the statement that
Social networking helps employees to create global contact list with colleagues, coworker etc,
which ultimately helps to improve the work efficiency of employees. Details of the replay are
shown in the table given below.
Project Analyst Senior Engineer Total
Positive 19 (80%) 09 (90%) 28 (82%)
Neutral 03 (12%) 01 (10%) 04 (11%)
Negative 02 (08%) 00 02 (07%)

4.2.4 Social networking and Knowledge management
Infosys is one among the earliest organization which integrated knowledge management system
in their social networking and work flow management system. After a number of development
stages, Infosys finally installed web based portal with social networking capabilities and access
to information, knowledge and experts called k shop in 1999. The main objective of the system
was to create provision of collaborative learning environment for Infosys employees so that they
can solve work related problems collectively, share new knowledge, information, skills etc.
Social networking tools helped employees to share solutions and new idea with peers, so that
knowledge actually maintained effectively inside the organization. According to manager,
Infosys is trying hard to maintain the natural flow of knowledge by distributing knowledge
through social channels inside the organization so that challenges from various lines of
department, geographical locations and time zone can be minimized.
Infosys have an effective hierarchical structure which supports the knowledge management and
learning. Granovetter (2004) says that, for a hierarchical organization the weak and strong ties of
employees obtained through social network helps to gain specialist knowledge and information.
Some time the organizational resources will be wasted, including time when employees tries to
find solution for problems in their work flow, without knowing that someone else in the
organization have been already created the solutions earlier. This can become a serious issue
inside knowledge oriented organization like Infosys. Social networking links of employees
automatically minimizes these challenges by making use of contact list and ties during their
work. This definitely increases employees efficiency inside the organization. According to
Infosys manager, combined advantages of knowledge management as well as social networking
that employees get or find out better support and increasing their efficiency by eliminating the
mistakes and faults encountered in past. Lets see the survey results which indicate the success of
collaborative learning environment and knowledge management inside the organization. About
23 out of 34 employees have accepted the fact that social networking application in knowledge
management system helps them to get support from experts and avoids mistakes during the
workflow.



4.2.5 Productivity and workflow with communication modes
Social networking 2.0 applications are based on communication tools with advanced web .20
technologies. The integration of different modes of computer mediated communication into one
application allows knowledge workers to aggregate information in an effective manner.
(Cairncross, 2001, IBM,2007). Before two three decades productivity and workflow of a
software developing organization were controlled and accelerated with one to one
communication modes like e-mail, instant messaging and telephone calls. At that time this
modes of communication was a break through since synchronous real time communication were
time consuming. After that asynchronous communication like email, chats etc seem to be over
used or misused. (Richel, 2008) Now comes the era of web.2.0 technology and social networking
techniques, which are highly influenced personal life as well as business. Thus organizations
started implementing the strategy of improving productivity and efficiency of employees through
social networking communication tools like wikis, blogs, instantaneous messaging etc. Software
developing activity is complex process in which employees are supposed to take a number of
decisions in there every day work. According to the Manager of Infosys, employees uses open
forum to make discussion and get support to make decisions. So that send and resend of emails
are not necessary. This saves time and lead to increased efficiency and productivity. Lets see
some of the most commonly using computer mediated communication tools included in social
networking 2.0 Infosys.
One to one communication mode: One to one communication is time critical communication
with confidential and sensitive information. Infosys employees uses messaging system
integrated in integrated working environment or email system for private and personal
communication. According to the primary level information collected, employees prefer to use
messaging system integrated in social networking than conventional e mail system.
One to many communication mode: This communication mode is normally used to circulate
ideas, information and skills to a broad audience. Infosys k shop includes blogging option, in
which employees shares their knowledge in a narrative format. According Infosys manager,
Company formally used traditional communication methods like newsletters, but the
introduction of new advanced communication tools like blogs has made drastic changes in
employee one to many communications, reflected in the improvement of employee efficiency.
Many to many communication mode: Many to many communication mode is one of the most
attractive communication mode web 2.0 technologies. Infosys make use of wikis and forums for
this kind of communication. Wikis helps the organization to collaborate multiple users for
effective support and decision making by adding , editing and removing content from the
website. Forums includes the question answer section with the experts, in which employees can
refer this for frequent problems or communicate with experts to find solution to their problems.
According to Infosys , company focuses on joint decision making and collaborative planning
with this mode of communication. In addition this type of communication also helps to acquire
effective knowledge capture and classification.
Infosys actually integrates all this modes of communication into one application actually benefits
to achieve high contribution and participation rate from the employees. In the survey 25 out of
34 participants agreed to the statement of Cairncross (2001) which is The integration of
different modes of computer mediated communication into one application allows knowledge
workers to aggregate information in an effective manner. From this we can argue that the
integrated communication modes of the social networking tools have made a positive impact in
the efficiency of the employees. Details of the questionnaire replay are shown in the table given
below.
Project Associative
(24)
Senior Engineer
(10)
Total (34)
Positive 19 06 25
Negative 02 03 05
Neutral 03 01 4

4.2.6 Employee satisfaction and motivation
For the evaluating the improvement of employee efficiency due to social networking, it is
important to analyze the satisfaction and motivation level of employees with SNS. Pervious
researches argues that open platform of social networking and collaborative web 2.0 tools have
improved the satisfaction level of employees in the working environment and motivate them to
contribute more to the work they doing. According to Peter Kollock, there can be motivations
for people to contribute knowledge, expertise and time without expectation of receiving a direct
benefit in return. (Smith & Kollock, 2000) To make this clear, a person will be motivated to
help another employee or contribute to the group by expecting to receive help and support with
valuable information in return from the group or individual. This can lead to the creation of an
organizational culture of sharing knowledge, skills and expertise with great team effort.
Another important factor which motivates employees are the rating and feedback features of
social network. Employees will be satisfied with their contribution if they get a good feedback
from the group or team, on the same time feedback also helps them to improve to the expectation
level of team and organization. Organization can effectively rate the contribution of employees
in individual basis with feedback to award them reward. This will improve the satisfaction level
of the employees. According to Infosys manager, companies rates the contribution of employees
with social networking tools and consider this feedback at the time of promotion and other
packages, which will motivate and satisfies employees. Thus we can strengthen the argument of
Brown and Duguid (2000) Digital reputation serves to recognize a persons contribution to and
beyond the immediate group and gives value to the individual knowledge and innovation in the
case of Infosys.
Thus social networking increases the visibility of the employees in a group and the prestige and
recognition develops motivation and satisfaction in them automatically. According to Infosys
manager, this one of the most effective way Infosys promotes innovation in their organization. In
addition most of employees in the survey also agreed to the statement that Digital recognition
through feedback and rating motivates employees to contribute and improve more and promotes
innovation. Out of 24 software project analyst 16 and 10 out of 10 senior engineers agreed the
statement. About 5 project analysts disagree this statement and 3 have neutral replay, while the
correlation analyzes it is find out that these replays are from employees with less experience in
the organization. As proved earlier in this research the use and awareness of social networking is
low among employees with less than one year experience. With these circumstances we can
forward the argument that social networking actually motivates employees and promotes
satisfaction. Details of the survey replay and correlation analyses is shown the graphs given
below.


According to the manager employees shares their innovation in the network not only expecting
the rewards and reorganization but also due to the belief that the group will improve their
innovation so that their innovation will moves into reality and would be more useful. From this
company automatically gets a brain storming section on a particular innovation with number
suggestions which makes the innovation fast and adaptable to the working environment. Since
software development is knowledge orientated process and innovation helps the organization to
create competitive advantage on highly competitive market, Infosys is promoting innovation
through social networking with proper motivation and rewarding. These factors also points
towards the positive hypothesis that, social networking contributes to increase the efficiency of
employees in software development.
4.2.7 Support for software engineering
From the above discussion the point became clear that Infosys is making efficient use of social
media features for their collaborative software development process. A part from that, another
important point which can impact employees efficiency in working environment is the help and
support features. How well these tools support collaborative and isolated projects without
wasting time and effort is an important question under study. It has already proved that some of
the important social networking 2.0 features of Infosys like wikis and forums tagging etc, helps
employees to find solution for their problem faster and effectively than before. Formally
employees had to use e-mail system by send and resend emails, which probably took hours or
days to get replay. This situation was completely eliminated with the installation of the new
improved networking and communication technology. Forums help the employees to get in
touch with experts for carry out question answer section. On the same time wikis helps the
employees refer, edit, add and remove outdated information which will help employees to built
more user friendly software development environment. According to an Infosys employee, the
help and support features of Infosys are ten times faster than the previous system with more
advanced features. In the survey result also most of the employees (29 out of 34) accepts the fact
that they are utilizing the help and support features of software engineering environment of
Infosys.
4.3 Negative impact of social networking on employees
Lets discuss some of the negative aspects of social networking which limits efficiency of
employees in an organization. According to Kaperskylab (2008) , through social networking and
other integrated applications employees gets access to large volume of information. This can
create risk of engineering attack like hacking and virus if the organization did not took respective
security measures. The threats from virus, spyware, malware etc is a serious issue when dealing
with social networking in business.
4.3.1 Information security
In modern communicative world businesses compete themselves to communicate and engage
their employees more directly without losing the control of sensitive and intellectual information.
The threat from virus , hackers ,spy virus are minimum in the case of Infosys because , the social
networking features and even the social networking site Infosys Bubble are hundred percent
internal to the organization. An Infosys employee with proper authentication and identification
can only get into this web based tools and social websites. This helps the organization to keep
away any unwanted risk generated through outside hackers and virus.
4.3.2 Misuse and overuse
Another important factor is the misuse of employees like making fake accounts, gathering
personal information like e mail, phone number, job title etc. Using this information for private
purposes other than work related factors can create personal conflicts inside the organization.
This will influence the efficiency of employees by wasting time, coordination issues, team work
etc , and creates extra burden for managers to solve internal problems in busy schedule.
According to manager, Infosys have a higher concern and control on these factors in their social
networks. This is the reason why Infosys strictly regulates the rule inside social network. As per
an article on Tech circle employees are not allowed to post personal comments, misuse of social
networking facilities since company expects certain level of discipline inside the social
platform. (Company Management , 2011). This indicates that Infosys management have a
higher hand in regulating employees discipline inside the organization , so that the impact of
misuse in social network will not considerably impact the efficiency of employees negatively.
4.3.3 Productivity
One of the biggest concerns about the use of social networking is the threat for negative impact
on productivity of the organization due to over use. Productivity of an organization can be
reduced if the employees spend so much of time in social networking by posting personal
comments and information other than work related matters. If the organization have no control
on these tools employees with misuse wikis, blogs etc only for personal and social purpose not
work related issues. Even if companies have control over these factors, it cannot be avoid
completely. Only thing organization can do to minimize this thing to minimum level. According
to Infosys manager, employees are highly aware about company disciple policy and
responsibility so only minor problems of this kind were reported in his career time. In survey
about 24 out of 34 employees accepts the statement that the use of asynchronous
communication methods such as blogs and wikis helps the organization increase productivity and
efficiency. This shows that a good percent of employees believes that social networking tools
like blogs, wikis etc helped them to increase their productivity rather than the negative side.

The graph shows the reply of employees for and against the statement that social networking
improves the productivity inside the organization. The blue bar shows employees favor to the
statement and green indicates the negative reply. It is clear from the graph that positive side is
considerably high when comparing negative and neutral side.
4.3.4 Knowledge management
Next important criticism about social networking in business is about knowledge management
and its control inside the organization. In social networking tools like wikis, blogs etc, and
knowledge is created not in a controlled hierarchical manner. Anybody in the social network can
publish knowledge and information, edit, remove and update content, no matter how much
experience and knowledge they got. So the reliability of knowledge and information cannot be
ensured like previous systems. In previous system information and knowledge were generated
and communicated by specialist staffs through one to many communication modes.
Consequences due to miss information and vandalism may be serious some time, and can affect
productivity as well as profitability of the organization. In Infosys, the social networking features
are made available to the employees through proper authenticated channels with their proper
identification information. Employees are fully responsible for their activities inside the network
with respect to company conditions so that deliberate miss uses of knowledge management tools
are avoided. Even though there is an inconsistent threat exists if the employees are not aware
about their mistake. This strengthens the statement of ClearSwift (2007) Employer are
responsible for negligent acts or omissions by their employees in the course of their work, even
if those acts are accidental.
4.3.5 Confidentiality
The social networking tool provides the features like social book marking, link, tagging etc so
that employees can share information. But employers are concerned about the loss of potential
and confidential information though this features. Any unguarded links, tags or book marking of
the employee can could lead to the security risk. This can possibly lead to financial damage,
security risks or even legal liabilities. But in Infosys, all social networking tools are internal to
the organization. Employees inside the organization cannot link, tag or book mark information to
outside the organization. According to the Manger, employees cannot not even access to their
company account from their home connection. This strengthens the security of confidential
information inside the organization. So Infosys security risk for losing potential and confidential
information through social networking tools is considerably small.
4.3.6 Other threats
One of the major concerns about social network in an organization was the fact that most of the
internal social network system will not correspond to organizational hierarchy and charts. This
aspect can lead to undermine command and results in inappropriate behavior inside the
organization. This may also impact the reputation of the organization. In order to overcome this
concern most of the software development organization implements strict strategies like pre
approved user content in the social network, control on use of language inside the network and
abusive behavior. Infosys also have same strict concern and control over the social media
network to maintain the social communication to controllable state. This is maintained by
appropriate project manager and department heads.
In addition to these major disadvantages, social networking in business also contributes to some
minor problems. First one among this company must take extra effort for maintain high
contribution and interaction rate of employees to new tools. For example, some of the employees
may not be interested in blogging at the beginning. To attract maximum employees to the
system, the organization must implement some promotional activities. Organization must spend
extra resources since they committed to manage social media presence inside the organization
for employee freedom and fun. Special effort must be taken to regulate the system especially
respond to the feedbacks, security measures, new content creation etc. In most of the
organization implementation new advanced system and change management needs high initial
investment, it is difficult for quantify the return of investment of the new system over another. In
the case of Infosys, since company itself in the field of software development and IT the cost of
investment is low. According to the Manager , Infosys have a special team for the development,
updating and maintenance of all integrated and collaborative system in software engineering
environment which includes ,work flow management system, social networking , knowledge
management system. Responsibility of this team is to make an effective software development
environment inside the organization with help , support , knowledge , skills development , fun
and freedom without losing the confidentiality and reputation of the organization. The teams
controls and coordinates the activities and also carry out research and development for upgrading
the current system with new features of technological development.