The dynamics of leadership and success in software development teams

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Betti, Lorenzo, Gallo, Luca, Wachs, Johannes, Battiston, Federico
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Betti, Lorenzo
Gallo, Luca
Wachs, Johannes
Battiston, Federico
author_facet Betti, Lorenzo
Gallo, Luca
Wachs, Johannes
Battiston, Federico
contents From science to industry, teamwork plays a crucial role in knowledge production and innovation. Most studies consider teams as static groups of individuals, thereby failing to capture how the micro-dynamics of collaborative processes and organizational changes determine team success. Here, we leverage fine-grained temporal data on software development teams from three software ecosystems -- Rust, JavaScript, and Python -- to gain insights into the dynamics of online collaborative projects. Our analysis reveals an uneven workload distribution in teams, with stronger heterogeneity correlated with higher success, and the early emergence of a lead developer carrying out the majority of work. Moreover, we find that a sizeable fraction of projects experience a change of lead developer, with such a transition being more likely in projects led by inexperienced users. Finally, we show that leadership change is associated with faster success growth. Our work contributes to a deeper understanding of the link between team evolution and success in collaborative processes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_18833
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The dynamics of leadership and success in software development teams
Betti, Lorenzo
Gallo, Luca
Wachs, Johannes
Battiston, Federico
Physics and Society
Social and Information Networks
From science to industry, teamwork plays a crucial role in knowledge production and innovation. Most studies consider teams as static groups of individuals, thereby failing to capture how the micro-dynamics of collaborative processes and organizational changes determine team success. Here, we leverage fine-grained temporal data on software development teams from three software ecosystems -- Rust, JavaScript, and Python -- to gain insights into the dynamics of online collaborative projects. Our analysis reveals an uneven workload distribution in teams, with stronger heterogeneity correlated with higher success, and the early emergence of a lead developer carrying out the majority of work. Moreover, we find that a sizeable fraction of projects experience a change of lead developer, with such a transition being more likely in projects led by inexperienced users. Finally, we show that leadership change is associated with faster success growth. Our work contributes to a deeper understanding of the link between team evolution and success in collaborative processes.
title The dynamics of leadership and success in software development teams
topic Physics and Society
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.18833