The True Role of Active Communicators: An Empirical Study of Jazz Core Developers
Sherlock A. Licorish, Stephen G. MacDonell

TL;DR
This study investigates how active core developers in IBM Jazz contribute socially and intellectually, revealing their multifaceted roles in fostering team cohesion and organizational processes in distributed agile teams.
Contribution
It provides a nuanced, contextual understanding of core developers' social and psychological roles, using qualitative methods beyond traditional quantitative analyses.
Findings
Core developers work across multiple roles and are central to team processes.
They maintain positive team atmosphere and provide context awareness.
High-performing teams rely on individual, collective efforts and organic organizational structures.
Abstract
Context: Interest in software engineering (SE) methodologies and tools has been complemented in recent years by research efforts oriented towards understanding the human processes involved in software development. This shift has been imperative given reports of inadequately performing teams and the consequent growing emphasis on individuals and team relations in contemporary SE methods. Objective: While software repositories have frequently been studied with a view to explaining such human processes, research has tended to use primarily quantitative analysis approaches. There is concern, however, that such approaches can provide only a partial picture of the software process. Given the way human behavior is nuanced within psychological and social contexts, it has been asserted that a full understanding may only be achieved through deeper contextual enquiries. Method: We have followed…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSoftware Engineering Techniques and Practices · Software Engineering Research · Open Source Software Innovations
