Evaluating the Impact of Peer Impression on Project Outcomes in Free/Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS) Projects

评估同行印象对免费/自由开源软件 (FLOSS) 项目成果的影响

• 批准号: 1322276
• 负责人: Jeffrey Carver
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1322276&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Evaluating; Impact; Peer; Impression; Project

Software development organizations that employ a distributed development model (i.e. participants are not co-located) are an important class of virtual organizations, operating as sociotechnical systems that incorporate computer-mediated communication and collaboration to enable their success. Despite the availability of various sociotechnical interaction techniques, the literature suggests that distributed teams require more time and resources than co-located teams to do the same amount of work. The lack of physical interaction among members of distributed teams hinders the process of impression formation, because individuals have difficulty obtaining an accurate view of the expertise and ability of teammates. Inaccurate perceptions may lead distributed software developers to improperly disregard teammates' input, ultimately reducing the productivity of the team as a whole. In this project we will model the process of peer impression formation in Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects, one of the most common types of virtual software development organizations. The objectives of this project are 1) to build and evaluate an empirical model describing the impression-formation process, 2) to measure the accuracy of peer impressions, and 3) to observe how peer impressions affect project outcomes.This project seeks to identify and understand how various types of sociotechnical interactions (e.g. via code review, bug repositories, and code repositories) influence peer impression formation in distributed FLOSS projects. We will evaluate how peer impressions affect collaboration and project outcomes. The results of this work will improve the software development process for FLOSS projects. Therefore, this research will have broad impacts on society because of the large number of FLOSS projects that provide key software for many important tasks. This work will also contribute to building the first theoretical model of impression formation processes in FLOSS projects. In addition to their direct applicability in FLOSS project, these results will be also applicable to other types of distributed software development, which is largely similar to FLOSS development and has been adopted worldwide by many commercial organizations.

采用分布式开发模型(即参与者不在同一地点)的软件开发组织是一类重要的虚拟组织，它们作为社会技术系统运行，结合了计算机中介的沟通和协作以使其能够取得成功。尽管有各种社会技术交互技术，但文献表明，分布式团队比共处一地的团队需要更多的时间和资源来完成相同数量的工作。分散的团队成员之间缺乏身体互动阻碍了印象的形成过程，因为个人很难准确地了解队友的专业知识和能力。不准确的认知可能会导致分布式软件开发人员不适当地忽视团队成员的输入，最终降低整个团队的生产率。在这个项目中，我们将对最常见的虚拟软件开发组织之一的Free/Libre和开放源码软件(FLOSS)项目中同事印象的形成过程进行建模。本项目的目标是1)建立和评估一个描述印象形成过程的经验模型，2)测量同伴印象的准确性，以及3)观察同伴印象如何影响项目结果。本项目试图识别和理解不同类型的社会技术交互(例如，通过代码审查、错误资源库和代码资源库)如何影响分布式牙线项目中同伴印象的形成。我们将评估同行印象如何影响协作和项目结果。这项工作的结果将改进FLOSS项目的软件开发过程。因此，这项研究将产生广泛的社会影响，因为大量的FLOSS项目为许多重要任务提供了关键软件。这项工作还将有助于建立第一个牙线项目中印象形成过程的理论模型。除了它们在FLOSS项目中的直接适用性外，这些结果还将适用于其他类型的分布式软件开发，这些类型的分布式软件开发在很大程度上类似于FLOSS开发，并已被全球许多商业组织采用。