Developing an h-index for OSS developers

The public data available in Open Source Software (OSS) repositories has been used for many practical reasons: detecting community structures; identifying key roles among developers; understanding software quality; predicting the arousal of bugs in large OSS systems, and so on; but also to formulate and validate new metrics and proof-of-concepts on general, non-OSS specific, software engineering aspects. One of the results that has not emerged yet from the analysis of OSS repositories is how to help the “career advancement” of developers: given the available data on products and processes used in OSS development, it should be possible to produce measurements to identify and describe a developer, that could be used externally as a measure of recognition and experience. This paper builds on top of the h-index, used in academic contexts, and which is used to determine the recognition of a researcher among her peers. By creating similar indices for OSS (or any) developers, this work could help defining a baseline for measuring and comparing the contributions of OSS developers in an objective, open and reproducible way

What makes software engineers go that extra mile?

Current research suggests that motivation factors in software engineering are evolving and that our current understanding of motivation in software engineering is out of date. In this paper an analysis of semi-structured interviews with 13 professional software engineers is presented. The data suggests that „the work‟ makes software engineers go that extra mile and that „people‟ are important, but that „obstacles‟ really sap the energy of software engineers

Models of motivation in software engineering

Motivation in software engineering is recognized as a key success factor for software projects, but although there are many papers written about motivation in software engineering, the field lacks a comprehensive overview of the area. In particular, several models of motivation have been proposed, but they either rely heavily on one particular model (the job characteristics model), or are quite disparate and difficult to combine. Using the results from our previous systematic literature review (SLR), we constructed a new model of motivation in software engineering. We then compared this new model with existing models and refined it based on this comparison. This paper summarises the SLR results, presents the important existing models found in the literature and explains the development of our new model of motivation in software engineering

Don’t Look Back: The Paradoxical Role of Recording in the Fashion Design Process

Although there is little systematic research in academia or industry examining design processes in Fashion, anecdotal evidence, based on self- reports and observations, suggests that designers very rarely record the process of designing. Conversely, benefits and requirements of recording the design process within other domains, such as Engineering and Architecture, are well supported in the literature. This paper attempts to explore the dichotomy of recording and non-recording practice across these fields through a review of the literature, semi-structured interviews and a report on one case study in particular, drawing out further detail. Commonalities and differences are identified and new directions for research proposed

Prosocial Motivation of Private Sector IT Professionals Joining Government

Attracting highly skilled IT talent has become a priority and an immense burden for government organizations—especially when they have other—higher paying—employment opportunities. We set out to explore why IT professionals choose a government job to make an impact on society. We aim at disentangling the effects of different types of motives, such as extrinsic, intrinsic, and other-oriented motivational forces on the decision to accept a challenging government IT job. We use self-determination theory (SDT) to analyze publicly available statements of former private sector IT professionals reporting their reason for joining 18F. Our study is one of the first attempts to use SDT as a comprehensive framework for conducting qualitative research into work motivation in the public sector. We shed light on the conceptual and empirical distinctiveness of motives, behaviors, and perceptions of prosocial impact, which are often lumped together in the public service motivation (PSM) literature. We contribute novel empirical evidence to a nascent stream of research that uses SDT to disentangle the intrinsic, prosocial, and purely extrinsic motives that drive individuals' decisions to join public-sector organizations

Digital Servitization and Business Model Innovation in SMEs: A Model to Escape From Market Disruption

The progress and the adoption of digital technologies can rapidly make products, processes, and business models obsolete, until disrupting entire markets. In this context, small–medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in manufacturing are especially challenged due to their limited resources and smallness liabilities. Firms can implement, design, and deliver new smart and connected products that change the way they compete and trigger the provision of services—until redesigning the entire business model. However, little knowledge is available on how SMEs may effectively trigger and catalyze such transition. Using an interpretative research approach inspired by the design research methodology, in this article, we explore how SMEs may leverage digital servitization to escape from a disrupted market. Based on our findings, an original digital servitization model tailored for SMEs is proposed. Finally, the study provides a set of research and managerial implications on how SMEs can overcome market disruption in the manufacturing context through digital servitization and business model innovation

Environmental Factors Influencing Individual Decision-Making Behavior in Software Project: A Systematic Literature Review

As one of the crucial human aspects, individual decision-making behavior that may affect the quality of a software project is adaptive to the environment in which the individual is. However, no comprehensive reference framework of the environmental factors influencing individual decision-making behavior in software projects is presently available. This paper undertakes a systematic literature review (SLR) to gain insight into existing studies on this topic. After a careful SLR process, 40 studies were targeted to solve this question. Based on these extracted studies, we first provided a taxonomy of environmental factors comprising eight categories. Then a total of 237 factors are identified and classified using these eight categories, and some major environmental factors of each category are listed in the paper. The environmental factors listing and the taxonomy can help researchers and practitioners to better understand and predict the behavior of individuals during decision making and to design more effective solutions to improve people management in software projects