Start Date
11-12-2016 12:00 AM
Description
The success of open source software project teams largely relies on team members’ efficient and productive collaborations. In this paper, we investigated the impacts of OSS project members’ geographic dispersion on their team performance (OSS project success). Existing empirical studies focused on analyzing the impacts of either virtual or face-to-face collaborations alone, but rarely studied the situation when both settings coexist in a heavily technology-dependent context like OSS development. Moreover, the impacts of spatial and temporal (time zone convenience) geographic distances were not clearly distinguished before. To address these, we use the instrument variable estimation to analyze data from a real-world online OSS community. The results show that the geographic distances among team members negatively affect project success, even after controlling temporal dispersion and other related factors. Our results can provide insights for OSS project managers to help devise strategies and policies to improve team performance and thus project success.
Recommended Citation
Hu, Daning; Li, Xiao; and Zhang, Michael, "The Impacts of Geographic Dispersion on OSS Project Success:Face-to-face vs. Virtual Collaboration" (2016). ICIS 2016 Proceedings. 16.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2016/ManagingIS/Presentations/16
The Impacts of Geographic Dispersion on OSS Project Success:Face-to-face vs. Virtual Collaboration
The success of open source software project teams largely relies on team members’ efficient and productive collaborations. In this paper, we investigated the impacts of OSS project members’ geographic dispersion on their team performance (OSS project success). Existing empirical studies focused on analyzing the impacts of either virtual or face-to-face collaborations alone, but rarely studied the situation when both settings coexist in a heavily technology-dependent context like OSS development. Moreover, the impacts of spatial and temporal (time zone convenience) geographic distances were not clearly distinguished before. To address these, we use the instrument variable estimation to analyze data from a real-world online OSS community. The results show that the geographic distances among team members negatively affect project success, even after controlling temporal dispersion and other related factors. Our results can provide insights for OSS project managers to help devise strategies and policies to improve team performance and thus project success.