Evaluating Socio-Technical Coordination in Open-Source Communities: A Cluster-Based Approach

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inna Rytsareva ◽  
Qize Le ◽  
Emma Conner ◽  
Ananth Kalyanaraman ◽  
Jitesh H. Panchal
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Joint Project ◽  
Communication Structures ◽  
Development Organizations ◽  
Open Source Communities

In complex product development, coordination is the act of managing dependencies between artifacts. Socio-technical coordination is the achievement of coordination through the alignment of organizational structures and product structures. Socio-technical coordination is achieved in hierarchical product development organizations by aligning the organizational structure with the system architecture. However, within virtual community-based product development such as open source development, the organizational structure is not designed by a central authority. In contrast, the community evolves as a result of participation of individuals and their communication with other individuals working on the project. Hence, understanding and quantifying socio-technical coordination is particularly important in open-source communities. Existing approaches to measuring socio-technical coordination are based on the congruence between ideal communication and the actual communication structures within communities. The primary limitation of existing approaches is that they only account for explicit communication between individuals. Existing measures do not account for the indirect communication between individuals and the shared knowledge that individuals working on a joint project possess. Due to these limitations, the socio-technical coordination values have been observed to be very low in the existing literature. We propose two alternate approaches to measuring socio-technical coordination based on clustering techniques. We illustrate the approaches using a case study from an open source software development community. The proposed approaches present a broader and more encompassing view of coordination within open source communities.

Identifying Enablers and Barriers to Successful Platform-Based Product Development: A Case Study From Business-to-Business Products

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Jorgensen ◽  
David Havens ◽  
Paul Salvatore ◽  
Alvaro J. Rojas Arciniegas ◽  
Marcos Esterman
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Current State ◽  
Development Teams ◽  
Phase Gate ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Business To Business

Product development teams are facing continued pressure to develop more products in less time and with fewer resources. Platform-based developed is commonly seen as a solution to increase capacity of the product development pipeline. This research identified enablers and barriers to successful platform-based product development. This was achieved through a comprehensive literature review of the current state of the art and an exploratory case study of product development practices within a business-to-business environment from companies with significantly different cultures and experiences with platform-based product development. Key enablers identified in this research include institutionalizing systems engineering, development and communication of product development roadmaps, augmentation of phase gate review process and critical parameter characterization. Operational recommendations from this research are considered to be possible to implement without significant changes to existing processes and organizational structures.

Benefits and Pitfalls of Open Source in Commercial Contexts

2005 ◽  
pp. 222-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiayin Hang ◽  
Heidi Hohensohn ◽  
Klaus Mayr ◽  
Thomas Wieland
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Commercial Product ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Business Opportunity ◽  
Open Source Framework ◽  
Open Source Communities ◽  
Communication Culture

This chapter intends to show how companies can benefit from open source software and its development culture and how the open source communities could, in turn, be stimulated and accelerated. One of the first major steps for businesses that plan to act in this context is to accept that open source projects have their own communication culture. After explaining this fact, we illustrate its relevance on the basis of a case study in which an open source framework was used to build a commercial product. The decision-making process and the lessons learned from it point out some guidelines, particularly for companies that offer projects rather than products. As there are, however, more parties involved than just the developers when OSS is discussed as a business opportunity, we also classify the different players in the software business such as distributors, system integrators, and software/hardware vendors. Findings on roles and their motivations and restraints, partially based on a survey carried out within our research project, point up this categorization. The authors hope that this overview of the benefits and pitfalls will encourage more companies to make use of and invest in the open source way to develop and deploy software.

Ecology and Dynamics of Open Source Communities

2007 ◽  
pp. 46-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Weiss ◽  
Gabriella Moroiu
Keyword(s):  
Community Structure ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Preferential Attachment ◽  
Mailing Lists ◽  
Community Growth ◽  
Open Source Communities ◽  
Competition For Resources ◽  
Over Time

The goal of this chapter is to document the evolution of a portfolio of open source communities. These are communities formed around a set of related projects with common governance, which often produce artifacts shared among all projects. It helps to think of a portfolio of project communities as an ecology, in which the projects are mutually dependent, and there is both cross-project collaboration and competition for resources among the communities. As a case study, we explore the ecology of communities within the Apache project, one of the largest and most visible open source projects. We infer the community structure from developer mailing lists, and study how the communities evolve and interact over time. The analysis lends support to the often-stated hypothesis that open source communities grow by a process of preferential attachment. However, we show that the influx of external developers is not the only factor affecting community growth. The structure and dynamics of a community is also impacted by inter-project information flow, and the migration of developers between projects (including the formation of spin-offs).

Software Reuse in Open Source A Case Study

2013 ◽  
pp. 151-176
Author(s):  
Andrea Capiluppi ◽  
Klaas-Jan Stol ◽  
Cornelia Boldyreff
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Software Reuse ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Application Domain ◽  
Similar System ◽  
Counter Example ◽  
History Of ◽  
Support Software

A promising way to support software reuse is based on Component-Based Software Development (CBSD). Open Source Software (OSS) products are increasingly available that can be freely used in product development. However, OSS communities still face several challenges before taking full advantage of the “reuse mechanism”: many OSS projects duplicate effort, for instance when many projects implement a similar system in the same application domain and in the same topic. One successful counter-example is the FFmpeg multimedia project; several of its components are widely and consistently reused in other OSS projects. Documented is the evolutionary history of the various libraries of components within the FFmpeg project, which presently are reused in more than 140 OSS projects. Most use them as black-box components; although a number of OSS projects keep a localized copy in their repositories, eventually modifying them as needed (white-box reuse). In both cases, the authors argue that FFmpeg is a successful project that provides an excellent exemplar of a reusable library of OSS components.

scholarly journals Dilemmas within commercial involvement in open source software

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malgorzata Ciesielska ◽  
Ann Westenholz
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Level Of Involvement ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Literature Reviews ◽  
Open Source Communities ◽  
Social Logics

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature about the commercial involvement in open source software, levels of this involvement and consequences of attempting to mix various logics of action. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses the case study approach based on mixed methods: literature reviews and news searches, electronic surveys, qualitative interviews and observations. It combines discussions from several research projects as well as previous publications to present the scope of commercial choices within open source software and their consequences. Findings – The findings show that higher levels of involvement in open source software communities poses important questions about the balance between economic, technological, and social logics as well as the benefits of being autonomous, having access to collaborative networks and minimizing risks related to free-riding. There are six levels of commercial involvement in open source communities, and each of them is characterized by a different dilemma. Originality/value – The paper sheds light on the various level of involvement of business in open source movement and emphasize that the popularized “open innovation” concept is only the first step in real involvement and paradigm shift.

scholarly journals ORGANIZATION DESIGN IN MOTION: DESIGNING AN ORGANIZATION FOR AGILITY

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 2349-2358
Author(s):  
Saeedeh Shafiee Kristensen ◽  
Mitra Shafiee ◽  
Sara Shafiee
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Organization Design ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Organizational Agility ◽  
Data Infrastructure ◽  
Contingency Perspective ◽  
Large Size

AbstractIncreasingly competitive and multifaceted business landscapes and the accelerating pace of innovation require organizations to build in-house capability to evaluate the effectiveness of their design and redesign their organizational structure to drive agile product development. The purpose of this research is to examine how the ability of an organization to implement agile is affected by the organization design. A case study based on 35 semi-structured interviews and field observations at a leading, large-size, Danish software development company was carried out. Adopting the contingency perspective, this paper presents the relevant organizational elements that can increase organizational agility and how the companies can leverage the advantages of the design. Accordingly, it provides a framework that compromises eighteen core organizational practices grouped into four categories (organizational structure and governance, culture and people, IT tools and data infrastructure, and processes) to understand the effect of organization design on agile product development.

scholarly journals The Story is in the Structure: A Multi-Case Study of Instructional Design Teams

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Drysdale
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Instructional Design ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Instructional Designers ◽  
Technology Support ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
High Level

Although instructional designers are experienced and positioned to be leaders in online learning (Shaw, 2012), it was not previously known how organizational structures influenced their ability to act as leaders in their institutions. This problem warranted a deep exploration of the organizational structures for instructional design teams in higher education. This qualitative, multi-case study consisted of 3 individual universities each with a different organizational structure profile. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and document analysis with participants in 3 key roles at each institution: dedicated instructional designer, online faculty member, and online learning administrator. The research culminated in within-case analyses of each institution and a comparative case analysis of all 3 studied institutions. The results of the study revealed that the organizational structure that most positively influenced instructional design leadership was a centralized instructional design team with academic reporting lines. The results also showed that decentralized instructional designers experienced significant disempowerment, role misperception, and challenges in advocacy and leadership, while instructional designers with administrative reporting lines experienced a high level of role misperception specifically related to technology support. Positional parity between dedicated instructional designers and faculty, in conjunction with implementation of the recommended organizational structure, was found to be critical to empowering designers to be partners and leaders. 

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