Software Público Brasileiro

The project to evolve the Brazilian Public Software Portal
\cite{meirelles2017spb} was a partnership between government and academia held
between 2014 and 2016. In order to solve maintenance problems and fill
design-reality gaps in the portal, the Ministry of Planning (MPOG) joined the
University of Brasília (UnB) and the University of São Paulo (USP) to develop a
platform with features and technologies novelties in the government context.

The academic team carried out development activities in the Advanced Laboratory
of Production, Research and Innovation in Software Engineering of UnB. The
project management and development process in this laboratory is usually
executed adopting agile methodologies, such as Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum
and Kanban. For this project, a total of 42 undergraduate students, two MSc
students and two coordinator-professors participated in the development team.
Six IT professionals were also hired as senior developers due their vast
experiences in Front-end/UX or in one of the softwares integrated to the
platform.

The government team was composed of a director, a coordinator, and two IT
analysts from a department of MPOG. Although it was responsible for the
execution of this collaboration project, this department generally does not
execute development of ministry's software. This department is responsible for
contracting and homologating software development services and follows
traditional management approaches, such as the RUP.

In order to manage the project progress, these two aforementioned teams
periodically met in person. These meetings initially only took place at the
ministry's headquarters to discuss strategic/political and technical goals.
These meetings were held monthly with the presence of two UnB professors, the
executive-secretary of the Presidency (project supporter) and all MPOG members
responsible for the project. The management of the development team was
concentrated in the academia side. The workflow was organized in Redmine in
biweekly sprints and 4-month releases, with intermediate deliveries hosted in
university environment. However, with the progress of the project, this format
proved to be inefficient. Conflicts between the internal management processes
and differences in pace and goals of each institution were compromising the
platform development.

In this case study, we focus on analyzing the dynamics between government and
academia for collaborative development. We aim to map the practices adopted in
the project management and development process to harmonize the cultural and
organizational differences of the institutions involved. Our analysis was guided
by the following research questions:

\textbf{RQ1.} {How to combine different teams with different management processes
in a government-academia collaboration project?}

In this first moment, we describe what changes in the management model and the
development process have improved interactions between institutions, as well as
internally. To map the benefits obtained by these movements, we use evidence
obtained from interviews and online surveys with members on both sides, after
project closure. We also collect data from management and communication tools
used throughout the project.

In a second moment, we address our analysis to issues related to organizational
differences and diversity of project members in terms of maturity and experience
in collaborative development. The harmony between teams sought not only to
approximate the mind-set and culture of teams but also to delimitate the
interactions between different roles and responsibilities. Evaluating this
synergy generates the second research question:

\textbf{RQ2.} \textit{Which boundaries should be established between government
and academia teams in collaboration interactions?}

We highlight positive and negative effects of boundaries created among project
member using evidences from interview responses and open field responses from
online surveys.