We Don't Need Another Hero? The Impact of "Heroes" on Software Development

A software project has "Hero Developers" when 80% of contributions are delivered by 20% of the developers. Are such heroes a good idea? Are too many heroes bad for software quality? Is it better to have more/less heroes for different kinds of projects? To answer these questions, we studied 661 open source projects from Public open source software (OSS) Github and 171 projects from an Enterprise Github. We find that hero projects are very common. In fact, as projects grow in size, nearly all project become hero projects. These findings motivated us to look more closely at the effects of heroes on software development. Analysis shows that the frequency to close issues and bugs are not significantly affected by the presence of project type (Public or Enterprise). Similarly, the time needed to resolve an issue/bug/enhancement is not affected by heroes or project type. This is a surprising result since, before looking at the data, we expected that increasing heroes on a project will slow down howfast that project reacts to change. However, we do find a statistically significant association between heroes, project types, and enhancement resolution rates. Heroes do not affect enhancement resolution rates in Public projects. However, in Enterprise projects, the more heroes increase the rate at which project complete enhancements. In summary, our empirical results call for a revision of a long-held truism in software engineering. Software heroes are far more common and valuable than suggested by the literature, particularly for medium to large Enterprise developments. Organizations should reflect on better ways to find and retain more of these heroesComment: 8 pages + 1 references, Accepted to International conference on Software Engineering - Software Engineering in Practice, 201

Assessing technical candidates on the social web

This is the pre-print version of this Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 IEEEThe Social Web provides comprehensive and publicly available information about software developers: they can be identified as contributors to open source projects, as experts at maintaining weak ties on social network sites, or as active participants to knowledge sharing sites. These signals, when aggregated and summarized, could be used to define individual profiles of potential candidates: job seekers, even if lacking a formal degree or changing their career path, could be qualitatively evaluated by potential employers through their online contributions. At the same time, developers are aware of the Web’s public nature and the possible uses of published information when they determine what to share with the world. Some might even try to manipulate public signals of technical qualifications, soft skills, and reputation in their favor. Assessing candidates on the Web for technical positions presents challenges to recruiters and traditional selection procedures; the most serious being the interpretation of the provided signals. Through an in-depth discussion, we propose guidelines for software engineers and recruiters to help them interpret the value and trouble with the signals and metrics they use to assess a candidate’s characteristics and skills

Empirical research on the evaluation model and method of sustainability of the open source ecosystem

The development of open source brings new thinking and production modes to software engineering and computer science, and establishes a software development method and ecological environment in which groups participate. Regardless of investors, developers, participants, and managers, they are most concerned about whether the Open Source Ecosystem can be sustainable to ensure that the ecosystem they choose will serve users for a long time. Moreover, the most important quality of the software ecosystem is sustainability, and it is also a research area in Symmetry. Therefore, it is significant to assess the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem. However, the current measurement of the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem lacks universal measurement indicators, as well as a method and a model. Therefore, this paper constructs an Evaluation Indicators System, which consists of three levels: The target level, the guideline level and the evaluation level, and takes openness, stability, activity, and extensibility as measurement indicators. On this basis, a weight calculation method, based on information contribution values and a Sustainability Assessment Model, is proposed. The models and methods are used to analyze the factors affecting the sustainability of Stack Overflow (SO) ecosystem. Through the analysis, we find that every indicator in the SO ecosystem is partaking in different development trends. The development trend of a single indicator does not represent the sustainable development trend of the whole ecosystem. It is necessary to consider all of the indicators to judge that ecosystem’s sustainability. The research on the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem is helpful for judging software health, measuring development efficiency and adjusting organizational structure. It also provides a reference for researchers who study the sustainability of software engineering

Role of Newcomers Supportive Strategies on Socio-Technical Performance of Open Source Projects

The success of open source software (OSS) projects have been studied in previous research. This paper focused on the effect of newcomers’ supportive strategies in OSS projects on the success level of the projects. Our research analyzes the socio-technical commitment to the project as a proxy for success. Data about 453 OSS projects from GitHub.com is collected and analyzed to empirically test the research model. We have applied a clustering technique to explore the dataset attributes. Results show the importance of newcomers’ supportive strategies on the different socio-technical aspects of OSS projects’ leading to success. Also, we have tested the effect of programming language diversity and project profile health on the success of projects. The outcome of this study has both managerial and practical implications