Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Library and Information Science Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Library and Information Science
Effective Work Practices For Floss Development: A Model And Propositions, Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison, Chengetai Masango
Effective Work Practices For Floss Development: A Model And Propositions, Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison, Chengetai Masango
School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship
We review the literature on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development and on software development, distributed work and teams more generally to develop a theoretical model to explain the performance of FLOSS teams. The proposed model is based on Hackman’s [1] model of effectiveness of work teams, with coordination theory [2] and collective mind [3] to extend Hackman’s model by elaborating team practices relevant to effectiveness in software development. We propose a set of propositions to guide further research.
Coordination Of Free/Libre Open Source Software Development, Kevin Crowston, Kangning Wei, Qing Li, U Yeliz Eseryel, James Howison
Coordination Of Free/Libre Open Source Software Development, Kevin Crowston, Kangning Wei, Qing Li, U Yeliz Eseryel, James Howison
School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship
The apparent success of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development projects such as Linux, Apache, and many others has raised the question, what lessons from FLOSS development can be transferred to mainstream software development? In this paper, we use coordination theory to analyze coordination mechanisms in FLOSS development and compare our analysis with existing literature on coordination in proprietary software development. We examined developer interaction data from three active and successful FLOSS projects and used content analysis to identify the coordination mechanisms used by the participants. We found that there were similarities between the FLOSS groups and the reported practices …
Effective Work Practices For Software Engineering: Free/Libre Open Source Software Development, Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison, Chengetai Masango
Effective Work Practices For Software Engineering: Free/Libre Open Source Software Development, Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison, Chengetai Masango
School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship
We review the literature on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development and on software development, distributed work and teams more generally to develop a theoretical model to explain the performance of FLOSS teams. The proposed model is based on Hackman's [34] model of effectiveness of work teams, with coordination theory [52] and collective mind [79] to extend Hackman's model by elaborating team practices relevant to effectiveness in software development. We propose a set of propositions to guide further research.
Towards A Portfolio Of Floss Project Success Measures, Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison, Chengetai Masango
Towards A Portfolio Of Floss Project Success Measures, Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison, Chengetai Masango
School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship
Project success is one of the most widely used dependent variables in information systems research. However, conventional measures of project success are difficult to apply to Free/Libre Open Source Software projects. In this paper, we present an analysis of four measures of success applied to SourceForge projects: number of members of the extended development community, project activity, bug fixing time and number of downloads. We argue that these four measures provide different insights into the collaboration and control mechanisms of the projects.
The Social Structure Of Open Source Software Development Teams, Kevin Crowston, James Howison
The Social Structure Of Open Source Software Development Teams, Kevin Crowston, James Howison
School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship
Open Source Software development teams provide an interesting and convenient setting for studying distributed work. We begin by answering perhaps the most basic question: what is the social structure of these teams? Based on a social network analysis of interactions represented in 62,110 bug reports from 122 large and active projects, we find that some OSS teams are highly centralized, but contrary to expectation, others are not. Furthermore, we find that the level of centralization is negatively correlated with project size, suggesting that larger projects become more modular. The paper makes a further methodological contribution by identifying appropriate analysis approaches …