Evaluating A Communication Technology Assessment Tool (Ctat): A Case Of A Cloud Based Communication Tool
A primary concern of distributed adaptive development environment (DADE) is that of human communication and knowledge sharing among geographically dispersed developers. Emerging cloudbased communication technologies claim to provide a support for communication and knowledge sharing among developers in a DADE. However, the challenge is how to enable developers to self assess and select appropriate cloud-based communication technologies for their DADE. Based on our recent empirical study, we have developed the construct of a practical communication technologies assessment tool (CTAT). We argue that, CTAT construct, as a part of our large conceptual framework of context aware cloud adaptation (CACA), can be useful to assist developers in the self assessment of appropriate cloud-based communication technologies for their DADE. This paper presents the evaluation of the CTAT by using it for the assessment of the Force.com cloud-based Chatter communication tool. The main objective of this evaluation is to determine to what extent CTAT construct is relevant, valuable and sufficient to achieve its purpose. The results of this evaluation indicate that CTAT seems useful when performing vendor independent assessment of communication technologies in order to make an informed decision about the selection of a communication tool for the DADE.