Mitigating Turnover with Code Review Recommendation: Balancing Expertise, Workload, and Knowledge Distribution

Developer turnover is inevitable on software projects and leads to knowledge loss, a reduction in productivity, and an increase in defects. Mitigation strategies to deal with turnover tend to disrupt and increase workloads for developers. In this work, we suggest that through code review recommendation we can distribute knowledge and mitigate turnover with minimal impact on the development process. We evaluate review recommenders in the context of ensuring expertise during review, Expertise, reducing the review workload of the core team, CoreWorkload, and reducing the Files at Risk to turnover, FaR. We find that prior work that assigns reviewers based on file ownership concentrates knowledge on a small group of core developers increasing risk of knowledge loss from turnover by up to 65%. We propose learning and retention aware review recommenders that when combined are effective at reducing the risk of turnover by -29% but they unacceptably reduce the overall expertise during reviews by -26%. We develop the Sophia recommender that suggest experts when none of the files under review are hoarded by developers but distributes knowledge when files are at risk. In this way, we are able to simultaneously increase expertise during review with a ΔExpertise of 6%, with a negligible impact on workload of ΔCoreWorkload of 0.09%, and reduce the files at risk by ΔFaR -28%. Sophia is integrated into GitHub pull requests allowing developers to select an appropriate expert or “learner” based on the context of the review. We release the Sophia bot as well as the code and data for replication purposes

Factoring Expertise, Workload, and Turnover into Code Review Recommendation

Developer turnover is inevitable on software projects and leads to knowledge loss, a reduction in productivity, and an increase in defects. Mitigation strategies to deal with turnover tend to disrupt and increase workloads for developers. In this work, we suggest that through code review recommendation we can distribute knowledge and mitigate turnover while more evenly distributing review workload. We conduct historical analyses to understand the natural concentration of review workload and the degree of knowledge spreading that is inherent in code review. Even though review workload is highly concentrated, we show that code review natural spreads knowledge thereby reducing the files at risk to turnover. Using simulation, we evaluate existing code review recommenders and develop novel recommenders to understand their impact on the level of expertise during review, the workload of reviewers, and the files at risk to turnover. Our simulations use seeded random replacement of reviewers to allow us to compare the reviewer recommenders without the confounding variation of different reviewers being replaced for each recommender. Combining recommenders, we develop the SofiaWL recommender that suggests experts with low active review workload when none of the files under review are known by only one developer. In contrast, when knowledge is concentrated on one developer, it sends the review to other reviewers to spread knowledge. For the projects we study, we are able to globally increase expertise during reviews, +3%, reduce workload concentration, -12%, and reduce the files at risk, -28%. We make our scripts and data available in our replication package. Developers can optimize for a particular outcome measure based on the needs of their project, or use our GitHub bot to automatically balance the outcomes

Resist the Hype! Practical Recommendations to Cope With R\'esum\'e-Driven Development

Technology trends play an important role in the hiring process for software and IT professionals. In a recent study of 591 software professionals in both hiring (130) and technical (558) roles, we found empirical support for a tendency to overemphasize technology trends in r\'esum\'es and the application process. 60% of the hiring professionals agreed that such trends would influence their job advertisements. Among the software professionals, 82% believed that using trending technologies in their daily work would make them more attractive for potential future employers. This phenomenon has previously been reported anecdotally and somewhat humorously under the label R\'esum\'e-Driven Development (RDD). Our article seeks to initiate a more serious debate about the consequences of RDD on software development practice. We explain how the phenomenon may constitute a harmful self-sustaining dynamic, and provide practical recommendations for both the hiring and applicant perspectives to change the current situation for the better.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Balanced Knowledge Distribution among Software Development Teams -- Observations from Open-Source and Closed-Source Software Development

In software development teams, developer turnover is among the primary reasons for project failures as it leads to a great void of knowledge and strain for the newcomers. Unfortunately, no established methods exist to measure how knowledge is distributed among development teams. Knowing how this knowledge evolves and is owned by key developers in a project helps managers reduce risks caused by turnover. To this end, this paper introduces a novel, realistic representation of domain knowledge distribution: the ConceptRealm. To construct the ConceptRealm, we employ a latent Dirichlet allocation model to represent textual features obtained from 300k issues and 1.3M comments from 518 open-source projects. We analyze whether the newly emerged issues and developers share similar concepts or how aligned the developers' concepts are with the team over time. We also investigate the impact of leaving members on the frequency of concepts. Finally, we evaluate the soundness of our approach to closed-source software, thus allowing the validation of the results from a practical standpoint. We find out that the ConceptRealm can represent the high-level domain knowledge within a team and can be utilized to predict the alignment of developers with issues. We also observe that projects exhibit many keepers independent of project maturity and that abruptly leaving keepers harm the team's concept familiarity.Comment: 33 pages, 17 figures, journal submissio

Riscos Da Perda De Conhecimento Em Emprsas Intensivas Em Vinculados Aos Fatores Humanos: Um Estudo De Casos Múltiplos

Atualmente os ativos intang veis s o recursos fundamentais para as organiza es especialmente na garantia de vantagem competitiva sustent vel Dentre eles o conhecimento fator determinante para o sucesso e sustentabilidade organizacional especialmente para as Empresas Intensivas em Conhecimento como as empresas de tecnologia Por isto a perda de conhecimento considerado um risco s organiza es especialmente quando relacionada aos fatores humanos Reter e captar os profissionais uma necessidade s organiza es as quais precisam atuar de forma proativa e preditiva revendo sua postura frente estes novos desafios Ou seja mitigar a perda de conhecimento fundamental para sobreviv ncia das mesmas Desta forma o objetivo desta pesquisa compreender os riscos da perda de conhecimento para Empresas Intensivas em Conhecimento relacionado aos fatores humanos Para tanto foi realizada uma pesquisa qualitativa atrav s de estudo de caso m ltiplos para identificar as causas da perda de conhecimento identificar os impactos e apresentar as estrat gias de mitiga

Balance Expertise, Workload and Turnover into Code Review Recommendation

Developer turnover is inevitable on software projects and leads to knowledge loss, a reduction in productivity, and an increase in defects. Mitigation strategies to deal with turnover tend to disrupt and increase workloads for developers. In this work, we suggest that through code review recommendation, we can distribute knowledge and mitigate turnover while more evenly distributing review workload. We conduct empirical investigations to understand the natural concentration of review workload and the degree of knowledge spreading that is inherent in code review. Even though the review workload is highly concentrated, with the top 20% of reviewers doing 80.19% of reviews, code review naturally spreads knowledge and reduces the files at risk to turnover from 79.79% to 32.59%. To balance the review workload, reduce the Files at Risk to turnover, FaR, and maintain high levels of Expertise during the review, we evaluate existing code review recommenders and develop novel recommenders. We find that prior work that assigns reviewers based on file ownership concentrates knowledge on a small group of core developers, increasing the risk of knowledge loss from turnover by up to 65.19%. Recent work, WhoDo, that considers developer workload, assigns developers that are not suffciently committed to the project and increases FaR by 40.97%. We propose learning and retention aware review recommenders that when combined are effective at reducing the risk of turnover by -29.54%, but they unacceptably reduce the overall expertise during reviews by -25.30%. Combining recommenders, we develop the SofaWL recommender that suggests experts with low active review workload when none of the files under review are hoarded by developers, but distribute knowledge when files are at risk to turnover. In this way, we can simultaneously increase expertise during review with an ∆Expertise of 3.20%, reduce workload concentration, ∆GiniWork by -12.00%, and reduce the fles at risk, ∆FaR, by -23.92%. We then focus on the Risky File that have zero or one knowledgeable developers. We randomly replace one of the actual reviewers with a suggested developer using TurnoverRec when we have a risky file in the pull request. In this approach, we can increase Expertise substantially in comparison to TurnoverRec and reduce FaR by -25.14%. For the FaR++, we add a learner to the actual reviewers when we have a risky fle in the pull request. We reduce FaR by -83.88% but increase the number of review by 13.14%. To reduce the additional workload in AwareFaR, we only add reviewers when there are abandoned fles, this decreases FaR by -37.51% and only increases the number of reviews by 34.24%. Our data results and scripts are available in our replication package.

Demographic change: towards a framework to manage IT- personnel in times of scarcity of talent

En un entorno en el que el crecimiento demográfico negativo es una realidad en la mayoría de los estados europeos, las organizaciones deben enfrentar necesidades incrementos de la productividad laboral y una menor disponibilidad de empleados competentes. Uno de los sectores en que la situación expuesta es más evidente es el de las Tencnologías de la Información. Las teconologías de la información son cruciales para casi cualquier organización en cualquier sector y para cualquier persona. En un entorno socioeconómico en continuo cambio las organizaciones y sus departamentos de tecnologías de la información deben asumir los cambios en el mercado y ser capaces de desenvolverse de una forma ágil y con una orientación al cliente sin precedentes. Para las organizaciones, y en particular para sus elementos organizacionales más relacionados con las tecnologías de la información, la productividad de los empleados es un componente clave. De esta forma, la gestión de los recursos humanos, abarcando aspectos como su selección, desarrollo y retención es un aspecto clave para las organizaciones. El reto para las organizaciones es lograr la mejora en el ámbito de los procesos corporativos incluyendo como una parte importante de los mismos la gestión de los recursos humanos. La simbiosis de disciplinas como las tecnologías de la información, la economía, la psicología y la gestión puede lograr el incremento de la lealtad de los empleados. Para los profesionales modernos, los cambios de empleador se consideran dentro de la normalidad hasta encontrar un entorno adecuado que colme sus expectativas y necesidades. Dichas expectativas no se encuentran basadas únicamente en incentivos económicos, por lo que las organizaciones deben anticipar las expectativas y alinear sus estrategias a las expectativas de su fuerza laboral. La temática de este trabajo ha tenido repercusión en la literatura científica, sin embargo, no existe un estudio que identifique los factores que se presentan y determinan la retención de los trabajadores de las tecnologías de la información en los entornos organizacionales. Este es el objetivo de la presente tesis doctoral. Para ello, el primer paso que se pretende dar es concretar los aspectos organizacionales que son relevantes para el estudio del fenómeno. A partir de esta identificación, el autor diseña un marco en el que las partes identificadas se encuentran conectadas. El citado marco de trabajo presenta cinco niveles. Estos cinco niveles son: los salarios, la educación y capacidad de fuerza laboral, salud psicológica, salud fisiológica y balance de la vida laboral y profesional. Adicionalmente, el marco de trabajo presenta una aproximación jerárquica. Cada nivel presenta diferentes factores y métricas para definir y medir la situación organizacional ofreciendo oportunidades de derivar medidas para mejorar la situación. El marco de trabajo presenta 22 factores y 44 métricas. Adicionalmente, se ha desarrollado un modelo de implantación para el método propuesto. Con vistas a refinar el marco de trabajo y su modelo de implantación, se han llevado a cabo pruebas cualitativas y cuantitativas en el seno de un departamento de tecnologías de la in-formación perteneciente a una organización dedicada a los servicios financieros en Alemania. Se formularon y respondieron diversas preguntas de investigación en relación a ámbitos como el cambio demográfico, el estrés y los factores para el rendimiento laboral. Los resultados demuestran que el estrés está determinado por diferentes factores y que la mayoría de ellos deben ser tomados en consideración en la asignación de tareas y en el diseño de los entornos de trabajo. De la misma forma, se presentan diversos factores que incrementan la productividad laboral. Algunos de ellos como la conciliación de la vida laboral y la personal, la cultura organizacional o el salario deben ser tomados en consideración en las estrategias de gestión de recursos humanos en ámbitos organizacionales. Una estrategia de gestión de recursos humanos debe incluir adicionalmente aspectos relativos al reclutamiento, teniendo en cuenta la complentaridad con los factores anteriormente expuestos. Los resultados obtenidos también revelan que no existen evidencias de diferencias de género o de edad en la importancia de los factores de productividad o en los factores de estrés.Due to an unsatisfying demographic development in most European states, companies have to solve a trade-off between a needed increase of productivity on the one hand and fewer highly skilled employees on the other hand. One of the first sectors that will be influenced by this development is the Information Technology-industry (IT). Information technology is crucial for every company in every industry and for the people itself. In a permanently changing business environment, companies and especially their IT-departments must adapt to changes in the market and be more agile and customer oriented than ever before. To succeed in the IT sector, the productivity of employees is the key comonent. Therefore, the allocation and retention of these scarce resources in the best possible way is even more important. The challenge for companies is to improve the enterprise not only on the side of the organizational and process level, but to develop new strategies and approaches in human resource management. Only a symbiosis of the disciplines information technology, economics, psychology and management will enable relevant and indispensable employees to promote loyalty to the company. For a well-trained professional, frequent change of the employer, is as long associated with normality until the employees find the most suitable environment for fulfilling their needs and expectations. These expectations are no longer just based on financial incentives, consequently companies need to anticipate these expectations and align their strategies to them. Although the topic is quite popular in scientific literature, there is not a study devoted to identify these factors in organizational contexts. This Thesis is aimed to bridge this gap. The first step to achieve this goal is creating transparency over all parts of an organisation that are relevant to this topic. The author created a method that connects these relevant parts in one holistic framework. The framework consists of five layers. These layers are baseline wages, education and employee pool, psychological healthiness, physiological healthiness and work live balance. Also, the framework follows a hierarchical approach. Every layer has distinct factors and metrics to define and measure the status of the company and offers opportunities to derive measures to improve this situation. In total the framework consist of 22 factors and 44 metrics. Besides the framework, the author developed an implementation model for the proposed method. To refine the developed framework and implementation model, qualitative and quantitative tests were conductedn the IT-department of a financial service company in Germany. X Several research questions regarding demographic change, psychological stress and factors for employee performance were analysed and answered. The results show, that stress is influenced by several different stressors and the most of them need to be considered by companies when they allocate work or design workspaces. On the other side, there are several factors that promote employee productivity. Some of them, like work-life balance, company culture or salary are more important and should be a relevant part of every human resource management (HRM) strategy. A HRM strategy should involve proper measures for the recruiting and the development of employees because they complement each other and should be considered with the same importance. The results also show, that there is no evidence suggesting an age or gender related difference of the importance or the impact of productivity factors or psychological stressors.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología InformáticaPresidente: Antonio de Amescua Seco.- Secretario: Edmundo Tov0ar Carlo.- Vocal: Cristina Casado Lumbrera

Economic impacts of SEZs: Theoretical approaches and analysis of newly notified SEZs in India

This study aims at examining the economic impacts of SEZs in the Indian context. While doing so, it addresses the conceptual confusion about SEZs, outlines the evolution of SEZs; traces economic philosophies explaining the rationale and benefits of SEZs; extends existing theoretical literature to explain the economic impacts of SEZs; assesses the economic impacts of newly notified SEZs in India; reviews the strategies followed by various state governments in the implementation of the policy ; and draws policy implications. It argues that the existing economic theories donot adequately explain the rationale and contribution of SEZs. These approaches need to be extended by integrating the provisions of the theories of agglomeration economies and global value chains within the existing theoretical frameworks. It analyses the economic impacts of SEZs within the extended theoretical framework. It finds that while SEZs are stimulating direct investment and employment, their role appears to be more valuable in bringing about economic transformation from a resource-led economy to a skill and technology-led economy; from low value added economic activities to high value added economic activities; from low productive sectors to high productive sectors; and from unorganised to organized sectors, both at the national and regional levels. They have the potential of promoting new knowledge intensive industries; augmenting existing industrial clusters/industrial states; diversifying the local industrial base; and localizing global value chain. However, a strategic approach is required to reap the opportunities offered by SEZs.Special economic zones; Exports; FDI; Economic diversification; Agglomeration economies; global value chains;India