Understanding what motivates participation is a central theme in the research on open source software (OSS) development. Our study contributes by revealing how the different motivations of OSS developers are interrelated, how these motivations influence participation leading to performance, and how past performance influences subsequent motivations. Drawing on theories of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, we develop a theoretical model relating the motivations, participation, and performance of OSS developers. We evaluate our model using survey and archival data collected from a longitudinal field study of software developers in the Apache projects. Our results reveal several important findings. First, we find that developers' motivations are not independent but rather are related in complex ways. Being paid to contribute to Apache projects is positively related to developers' status motivations but negatively related to their use-value motivations. Perhaps surprisingly, we find no evidence of diminished intrinsic motivation in the presence of extrinsic motivations; rather, status motivations enhance intrinsic motivations. Second, we find that different motivations have an impact on participation in different ways. Developers' paid participation and status motivations lead to aboveaverage contribution levels, but use-value motivations lead to below-average contribution levels, and intrinsic motivations do not significantly impact average contribution levels. Third, we find that developers' contribution levels positively impact their performance rankings. Finally, our results suggest that past-performance rankings enhance developers' subsequent status motivations.
versity. His research focuses on understanding how teams coordinate across geographic and global boundaries and which team processes and information technologies are most effective in bridging these boundaries to achieve high levels of performance. His current research areas include global software and technical teams, team knowledge, team coordination, and spatial and temporal boundaries. SANDRA A. SLAUGHTER is an Associate Professor in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Slaughter worked in industry as a project manager and systems analyst at Hewlett-Packard, Rockwell International, and Square D Corporation. She has consulted with the Information Technology Management Association and with several companies on software design and development-related issues. Her research is motivated by her experience in software development and focuses on the performance implications of software design and development decisions. Currently, she is conducting research funded by the National Science Foundation on project management practices and software design and evolution. She has also commenced new projects that explore capabilities and performance in information technology outsourcing.ABSTRACT: Coordination is important in software development because it leads to benefi ts such as cost savings, shorter development cycles, and better-integrated products. Team cognition research suggests that members coordinate through team knowledge, but this perspective has only been investigated in real-time collocated tasks and we know little about which types of team knowledge best help coordination in the most geographically distributed software work. In this fi eld study, we investigate the coordination needs of software teams, how team knowledge affects coordination, and how this effect is infl uenced by geographic dispersion. Our fi ndings show that software teams have three distinct types of coordination needs-technical, temporal, and process-and that these needs vary with the members' role; geographic distance has a negative effect on coordination, but is mitigated by shared knowledge of the team and presence awareness; and shared task knowledge is more important for coordination among collocated members. We articulate propositions for future research in this area based on our analysis. KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: coordination, global software development, management of the information technology (IT) function, team knowledge.LARGE-SCALE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT REQUIRES a substantial amount of coordination because software work is carried out simultaneously by many individuals and teams, and then integrated into a single product. Software parts need to integrate and interoperate properly, and production schedules need to be synchronized, creating dependencies among tasks and people. These coordination challenges are compounded when the teams doing the work are distributed across multiple geographic locations. Developing software globally is increasingly b...
The information technology (IT) industry is characterized by rapid innovation and intense competition. To survive, IT firms must develop high quality software products on time and at low cost. A key issue is whether high levels of quality can be achieved without adversely impacting cycle time and effort. Conventional beliefs hold that processes to improve software quality can be implemented only at the expense of longer cycle times and greater development effort. However, an alternate view is that quality improvement, faster cycle time, and effort reduction can be simultaneously attained by reducing defects and rework. In this study, we empirically investigate the relationship between process maturity, quality, cycle time, and effort for the development of 30 software products by a major IT firm. We find that higher levels of process maturity as assessed by the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model\trademark are associated with higher product quality, but also with increases in development effort. However, our findings indicate that the reductions in cycle time and effort due to improved quality outweigh the increases from achieving higher levels of process maturity. Thus, the net effect of process maturity is reduced cycle time and development effort.software process improvement, software economics, software productivity, software quality, software costs, software cycle time, capability maturity model
ÐWith the approach of the new millennium, a primary focus in software engineering involves issues relating to upgrading, migrating, and evolving existing software systems. In this environment, the role of careful empirical studies as the basis for improving software maintenance processes, methods, and tools is highlighted. One of the most important processes that merits empirical evaluation is software evolution. Software evolution refers to the dynamic behavior of software systems as they are maintained and enhanced over their lifetimes. Software evolution is particularly important as systems in organizations become longer-lived. However, evolution is challenging to study due to the longitudinal nature of the phenomenon in addition to the usual difficulties in collecting empirical data. In this paper, we describe a set of methods and techniques that we have developed and adapted to empirically study software evolution. Our longitudinal empirical study involves collecting, coding, and analyzing more than 25,000 change events to 23 commercial software systems over a 20-year period. Using data from two of the systems, we illustrate the efficacy of flexible phase mapping and gamma sequence analytic methods originally developed in social psychology to examine group problem solving processes. We have adapted these techniques in the context of our study to identify and understand the phases through which a software system travels as it evolves over time. We contrast this approach with time series analysis, the more traditional way of studying longitudinal data. Our work demonstrates the advantages of applying methods and techniques from other domains to software engineering and illustrates how, despite difficulties, software evolution can be empirically studied.
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