Effect of Social Networks on Requirements Engineering in Open Source Projects

Deepa Gopal, Case Western Reserve University

Description

As more open source software (OSS) projects are enjoying tremendous popularity in the technological world, there is a growing interest in the requirements engineering (RE) practices of such communities and the exact nature of internal capital driving the RE activities. Structurally, most OSS software development groups consist of a core team of developers and a peripheral team of contributors whose interaction vary with the culture of the open source group. The current study proposes that the internal capital of OSS teams consists of the three facets found in traditional organizations – social, structural and cognitive and that the quality of RE in such projects is higher with higher levels of internal social capital. In addition, the study also posits that the perceived support of the core team of the open source teams has a positive impact on the performance of the members in the peripheral team.

 
Aug 11th, 12:00 AM

Effect of Social Networks on Requirements Engineering in Open Source Projects

As more open source software (OSS) projects are enjoying tremendous popularity in the technological world, there is a growing interest in the requirements engineering (RE) practices of such communities and the exact nature of internal capital driving the RE activities. Structurally, most OSS software development groups consist of a core team of developers and a peripheral team of contributors whose interaction vary with the culture of the open source group. The current study proposes that the internal capital of OSS teams consists of the three facets found in traditional organizations – social, structural and cognitive and that the quality of RE in such projects is higher with higher levels of internal social capital. In addition, the study also posits that the perceived support of the core team of the open source teams has a positive impact on the performance of the members in the peripheral team.