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

采用分布式开发模型的软件开发组织（即参与者不在同一位置）是虚拟组织的一个重要类别，作为社会技术系统运行，结合计算机中介的通信和协作以使其成功。尽管有各种社会技术交互技术的可用性，但文献表明，分布式团队比协同工作的团队需要更多的时间和资源来完成相同数量的工作。在分布式团队中，成员之间缺乏身体上的互动阻碍了印象形成的过程，因为个人很难准确地了解队友的专业知识和能力。不准确的认知可能导致分布式软件开发人员不恰当地忽视队友的输入，最终降低整个团队的生产力。在这个项目中，我们将模拟自由/自由和开放源代码软件（FLOSS）项目中同伴印象形成的过程，这是虚拟软件开发组织中最常见的类型之一。本项目的目标是1)建立并评估一个描述印象形成过程的实证模型，2)衡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。该项目旨在识别和理解各种类型的社会技术交互（例如，通过代码审查、bug存储库和代码存储库）如何影响分布式FLOSS项目中的同行印象形成。我们将评估同伴印象如何影响协作和项目成果。这项工作的结果将改进FLOSS项目的软件开发过程。因此，由于大量的FLOSS项目为许多重要任务提供关键软件，因此本研究将对社会产生广泛的影响。这项工作也将有助于在FLOSS项目中建立印象形成过程的第一个理论模型。除了它们在FLOSS项目中的直接适用性之外，这些结果也将适用于其他类型的分布式软件开发，这些开发在很大程度上与FLOSS开发相似，并且已被许多商业组织在全球范围内采用。

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.