A Deep Dive on the Impact of COVID-19 in Software Development

TL;DR

This study examines COVID-19's nuanced effects on software development through repository analysis and professional surveys, revealing diverse impacts on productivity, code quality, and wellbeing, emphasizing the need for further targeted research.

Contribution

It combines empirical repository analysis with surveys to provide a comprehensive view of COVID-19's complex impact on software development practices and professionals.

Findings

Impact of COVID-19 is a spectrum, not binary.

Significant variation in productivity and wellbeing among professionals.

More research needed to identify conditions influencing outcomes.

Abstract

Context: COVID-19 pandemic has impacted different business sectors around the world. Objective. This study investigates the impact of COVID-19 on software projects and software development professionals. Method: We conducted a mining software repository study based on 100 GitHub projects developed in Java using ten different metrics. Next, we surveyed 279 software development professionals for better understanding the impact of COVID-19 on daily activities and wellbeing. Results: We identified 12 observations related to productivity, code quality, and wellbeing. Conclusions: Our findings highlight that the impact of COVID-19 is not binary (reduce productivity vs. increase productivity) but rather a spectrum. For many of our observations, substantial proportions of respondents have differing opinions from each other. We believe that more research is needed to uncover specific conditions that cause certain outcomes to be more prevalent.