Software development in project teams has become more and more complex, with increasing demands for information and decision making. Software development in projects also hugely depends on effective interaction between people, and human factors have been identified as key to successful software projects. Especially in this context, managing and analyzing social networks is highly important. The instrument of social network analysis (SNA) provides fine-grained methods for analyzing social networks in project teams, going beyond the traditional tools and techniques of project management. This paper examines the importance of the application of SNA in software development projects. We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of research on software development projects and social network data published between 1980 and 2019. We identified and analyzed 86 relevant studies, finding that research on software development projects spans the topics of project organization, communication management, knowledge management, version and configuration management, requirement management, and risk management. Further, we show that most studies focus on project organization and that the most common method used to gather social data relies on automated extraction from various software development repositories in the SNA context. Our paper contributes to the software development literature by providing a broad overview of published studies on the use of social networks in helping software development projects. Finally, we identify research opportunities and make suggestions for addressing existing research gaps.

Traditional software development is shifting toward the open-source development model, particularly in the current environment of competitive challenges to develop software openly. The author employs a case study approach to investigate how organizations and their affiliated developers collaborate in the open-source software (OSS) ecosystem TensorFlow (TF). The analysis of the artificial intelligence OSS library TF combines social network analysis (SNA) and an examination of archival data by mining software repositories. The study looks at the structure and evolution of code-collaboration among developers and with the ecosystem's organizational networks over the TF lifespan. These involved organizations play a particularly critical role in development. The research also looks at productivity, homophily, development, and diversity among developers. The results deepen the understanding of OSS communities' collaborative developer and organization patterns. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the importance and evolution of social networks, diversity, and productivity in ecosystems.