What affects team behavior? Preliminary linguistic analysis of communications in the Jazz repository

Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

2013

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Section: Linguistic Analysis Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Repository and Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Adopting softer approaches in the study of repository data

Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

2013

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“…We also used the LIWC tool in a preliminary study of three different project areas from the Jazz repository to reveal cues for the way different teams work. In that study we found variances in behaviors among those solving different forms of software tasks [31], which led us to conjecture that the project environment may have contributed to these differences in behaviors. While we systematically examined three different project areas, probing team behaviors over different phases of their projects, and looked closely at specific team members [31], this initial study was largely exploratory and we only examined a small sample of artifacts which limited our level of inferences.…”

Section: Linguistic Analysis Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…During a large-scale project utilizing a multiple case study design to investigate team evolution and dynamics within the IBM Rational Jazz repository we observed that a few individuals dominated project interactions (see [31] where we examine the effect of project environment (project type, people involved) on team behaviors). These variations were detected while examining sociograms we created from practitioners' messages during initial SNA explorations (see Figure 1 for an illustration).…”

Section: Methods and Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The true role of active communicators

Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

2013

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Context: Interest in software engineering (SE) methodologies and tools has been complemented in recent years by research efforts oriented towards understanding the human processes involved in software development. This shift has been imperative given reports of inadequately performing teams and the consequent growing emphasis on individuals and team relations in contemporary SE methods. Objective: While software repositories have frequently been studied with a view to explaining such human processes, research has tended to use primarily quantitative analysis approaches. There is concern, however, that such approaches can provide only a partial picture of the software process. Given the way human behavior is nuanced within psychological and social contexts, it has been asserted that a full understanding may only be achieved through deeper contextual enquiries. Method: We have followed such an approach and have applied data mining, SNA, psycholinguistic analysis and directed content analysis (CA) to study the way core developers at IBM Rational Jazz contribute their social and intellectual capital, and have compared the attitudes, interactions and activities of these members to those of their less active counterparts. Results: Among our results, we uncovered that Jazz's core developers worked across multiple roles, and were crucial to their teams' organizational, intrapersonal and inter-personal processes. Additionally, although these individuals were highly task-and achievement-focused, they were also largely responsible for maintaining positive team atmosphere. Further, we uncovered that, as a group, Jazz developers spent a large amount of time providing context awareness in support of their colleagues. Conclusion: Our results suggest that highperforming distributed agile teams rely on both individual and collective efforts, as well as organizational environments that promote informal and organic work structures.

Exploring software developers’ work practices: Task differences, participation, engagement, and speed of task resolution

Information & Management

2017

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In seeking to understand the processes enacted during software development, an increasing number of studies have mined software repositories. In particular, studies have endeavored to show how teams resolve software defects. Although much of this work has been useful, we contend that large-scale examinations across the range of activities that are commonly performed, beyond defectrelated issues alone, would help us to more fully understand the reasons why defects occur as well as their consequences. More generally, these explorations would reveal how team processes occur during all software development efforts. We thus extend such studies by investigating how software practitioners work while undertaking the range of software tasks that are typically performed. Multiple forms of analyses of a longitudinal case study reveal that software practitioners were mostly involved in fixing defects, and that their engagement covaried depending on the nature of the work they were performing. Furthermore, multiple external factors affected speed of task resolution. Our outcomes suggest that behavioral and intrinsic issues may interact with extrinsic factors becoming significant predictors of the speed of software task resolution.