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（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，作为社会技术系统运行，包括计算机中介的通信和协作，以确保其成功。尽管各种社会技术的互动技术的可用性，文献表明，分布式团队需要更多的时间和资源比共处的团队做同样的工作量。分布式团队成员之间缺乏物理互动，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。不准确的感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力。在这个项目中，我们将模拟在自由/自由和开源软件（FLOSS）项目，虚拟软件开发组织的最常见的类型之一的同行印象形成的过程。本研究的目的是：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; 3）观察同伴印象如何影响项目结果。本研究旨在识别和理解各种类型的社会技术互动是如何产生的。（例如，通过代码审查，错误存储库和代码存储库）影响分布式FLOSS项目中的同行印象形成。我们将评估同行印象如何影响合作和项目成果。这项工作的结果将改善FLOSS项目的软件开发过程。因此，这项研究将对社会产生广泛的影响，因为大量的FLOSS项目为许多重要任务提供关键软件。这项工作也将有助于建立在FLOSS项目的印象形成过程的第一个理论模型。除了在FLOSS项目的直接适用性，这些结果也将适用于其他类型的分布式软件开发，这是在很大程度上类似于FLOSS的开发，并已通过世界各地的许多商业组织。

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.