Investigating the Dynamics of Free/Libre Open Source Software Development Teams

这是一项多学科和跨学科的研究(社会科学和计算机科学)，在自由/自由/自由开放源码(FLOSS)软件开发人员团队的背景下进行，以更好地了解这些团队中个人和团队行为变化背后的认知和社会结构。它解决了一般的研究问题：自组织的分布式团队开发和工作的动力是什么？组织工作越来越多地由相互依赖的知识工作者分散的团队来执行。这样的团队有很多好处，但成员之间的地理、组织和社会距离使团队成员难以建立有效所需的共同理解和社会结构。但到目前为止，研究和实践者社区对分布式团队的动态知之甚少，特别是对自组织团队。这项研究将研究分布式团队如何发展共享的心理模型来指导成员的行为，角色来调节对资源的访问，以及规范和规则来塑造行动，以及独立的、地理上分散的个人被社会化到这些团队中的动态。作为这项研究的基础，将开发一个概念框架，该框架将使用结构化的观点来整合对团队行为、实践社区和共享心理模型的研究。这个项目的一个关键创新是集成了三种方法来研究这些动态：自然语言处理和社交网络分析、团队互动记录的分析以及源代码分析。这项工作将由一个多学科小组进行，其中包括来自信息系统和自然语言处理领域的研究人员，并由巴里理工大学的一名国际合作者参与。这项研究将由牙线开发商顾问委员会指导，以确保相关性并促进将研究结果传播到实践中。这项研究将具有概念上、方法上和实践上的贡献。开发一个完整的理论框架来理解分布式团队的动态将对分布式团队的研究做出贡献。该项目将通过确定这些团队如何发展以及新成员如何社会化来促进对FLOSS开发和更广泛的分布式工作的了解和理解。了解这些团队中的结构和动作的动态，对于提高FLOSS团队、软件开发团队和分布式团队的整体效率非常重要。这项研究基于大量数据和强大的概念框架，对FLOSS团队采用的做法进行了深入调查，填补了文献中的空白。此外，研究将使用几种不同的技术来分析这些实践，从而更丰富地描述这些开发团队的动态。该项目将通过提出加强分布式FLOSS团队的方法来造福社会，这是一种日益重要的软件开发方法。这项研究将更广泛地揭示分布式工作团队，这对打算在实践中实施这种新颖的、技术支持的组织形式的经理们将是有价值的。这项研究的结果也可能被用来加强计算机中介通信技术(CMC)用于支持远程教育或科学协作的方式，这些都是分布式团队的新兴应用。为了改善研究的基础设施，这些工具和数据将提供给其他研究人员。此外，该项目还涉及到国际合作。这种交流扩大了两组科学家的视角、知识和技能。最后，该项目将通过为学生提供在研究团队中工作的机会，利用他们的能力和发展数据收集和分析方面的新技能，来促进教学、培训和学习。

This is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary study (social and computer science) in the context of teams of Free/Libre Open Source (FLOSS) software developers to better understand the cognitive and social structures that underlie changes in individual and team behaviors in these teams. It addresses the general research question: What are the dynamics through which self-organizing distributed teams develop and work? Increasingly, organizational work is performed by distributed teams of interdependent knowledge workers. Such teams have many benefits, but geographic, organizational and social distance between members makes it difficult for team members to create the shared understandings and social structures necessary to be effective. But as yet, research and practitioner communities know little about the dynamics of distributed teams, especially not self-organizing ones. This research will study how distributed teams develop shared mental models to guide members' behavior, roles to mediate access to resources, and norms and rules to shape action, as well as the dynamics by which independent, geographically-dispersed individuals are socialized into these teams. As a basis for this study, a conceptual framework will be developed that uses a structurational perspective to integrate research on team behavior, communities of practice and shared mental models. A key innovation of this project is the integration of three methods to investigate these dynamics: natural language processing and social network analysis of transcripts of team interactions and source code analysis. The work will be carried out by a multi-disciplinary team including researchers from the fields of information systems and natural language processing, and with participation of an international collaborator at Politechnic of Bari. The research will be guided by an advisory board of FLOSS developers to ensure relevance and to promote diffusion of the findings into practice. This study will have conceptual, methodological as well as practical contributions. Developing an integrated theoretical framework to understand the dynamics of a distributed team will be a contribution to the study of distributed teams. The project will advance knowledge and understanding of FLOSS development and distributed work more generally by identifying how these teams evolve and how new members are socialized. Understanding the dynamics of structure and action in these teams is important to improve the effectiveness of FLOSS teams, software development teams, and distributed teams in general. The study fills a gap in the literature with an in-depth investigation of the practices adopted by FLOSS teams based on a large pool of data and a strong conceptual framework. Furthermore, the research will use several different techniques to analyze these practices, and thus provide a richer portrait of the dynamics of these development teams. The project will benefit society by suggesting ways to strengthen distributed FLOSS teams, an increasingly important approach to software development. The study will shed light on distributed work teams more generally, which will be valuable for managers who intend to implement this novel, technology-supported organizational form in practice. Findings from the study might also be used to enhance the way computer-mediated communication technologies (CMC) are used to support distance education or scientific collaboration, which are emerging applications of distributed teams. In order to improve infrastructure for research, the tools and data will be made available to other researchers. As well, the project involves an international collaboration. Such exchanges expand the perspectives, knowledge and skills of both groups of scientists. Finally, the project will promote teaching, training, and learning by providing an opportunity for students to work on research teams, utilize their competencies and develop new skills in data collection and analysis.