Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

10-2021

Abstract

Studies of collaborating individuals engaged in collective enterprises usually focus on the individuals, rather than the links supporting their interaction. Accordingly, large scale software development ecosystems have also been examined primarily in terms of developer engagement. We posit that communication links between developers play a central role in the sustenance and effectiveness of such ecosystems. In this paper, we investigate whether and how developer attributes relate to the importance of the communication channels between them. We present a technique using 2nd order Markov models to extract features of interest of the links and apply the technique on data from a real-world project. Our statistical models - developed on records involving 900+ software developers, exchanging 20,000+ comments, across 500 units of work - offer surprising insights on factors associated with link importance, even after controlling for known effects. These results inform a deeper appreciation of the importance of links in large scale software development along with a number of practical implications.

Keywords

Software development, importance of links, developer influence, Markov models

Discipline

Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

2021 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME): Luxembourg, September 27 - October 1: Proceedings

First Page

1

Last Page

5

ISBN

9781665428828

Identifier

10.1109/ICSME52107.2021.00068

Publisher

IEEE

City or Country

Piscataway, NJ

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME52107.2021.00068

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